A New Recruit
by Hunter's Crescent Moon
Summary: Complete  Ember didn't believe it at first when she got a transmission from the year 2110, but when it started to become known that children went missing, she was more than willing to believe.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! I'm Abby. So this is my first fanfic that I've ever published. This fic is set just before the end of series 1 and I should mention that I haven't seen series 2, so I barely know anything that's happened in series 2. This story is about how I figured that things would be like while Caleb selected his recruits. As I said before, this is my first fic so any constructive criticism would be more than welcome. I should mention that English isn't my first language so there could be some spelling mistakes that the spell check missed.**

**And I just want to say a HUGE thank you to Oddments and Tweaks, for inspiring me to write my own Mission 2110 fic and for giving me advice and opinions of the ideas I have so far.**

**Anyway, onto the fic!**

Chapter 1: The Message

From the moment she got the first transmission, Ember thought that it was all just some gigantic joke her brother Bryce had set up.

It had all started on a Monday; Ember was practicing her hacker skills. It wasn't anything illegal, just some firewalls that Bryce had put up on the home computer. Ember was attempting to hack into the home computer from her laptop and smiled a little to herself as she was about to breach the last firewall.

"This was too easy." She muttered to herself with a grin.

Just as she was about to enter the final codes to break through the final fire wall, the screen went completely black.

"Oh come on!" Ember exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. "You got to be kidding me! This so isn't fair!"

Just as Ember was about to restart the laptop a small screen appeared on the black laptop screen and she stopped when she saw that it was a video that was waiting to be played.

"Caleb has established a broadcast link from 2110." A female voice said.

Ember stared at the screen for a moment, unsure of what to do before moving the cursor over to the 'play' icon. After a few moments of hesitating, Ember came to the decision and clicked play.

The video started to play and Ember noticed that the man didn't look much older than she was. One of his hands was completely gloved while the other hand had one of those gloves that had half the fingers cut off. On the man's right temple, there seemed to be a piece of metal attached to his skull and it ran all the way down to his cheek to his jaw. His face was a little pointy, but it suited him, actually it made him look quite handsome.

"Hey recruit." The man said as he pointed at the screen. "Can you hear me?"

Ember didn't answer, knowing that it was only a video. There wasn't a point in answering anyway, other than that it would make her look stupid.

"Listen, I got a mission for you." The man said. "I'm Caleb, and I'm talking to you from the year 2110. The world has been taken over by the evil Roboidz. There's so much I don't understand, but I think you can help. I've tapped into the Cycon Archive; it's full of data about the past. I'm sure there's information in there that can help me understand what's going on. How did I get here? What happened? And how do I defeat the Roboidz? Thing is, I can't access the data. That's where you come in. I need you to be my resistance recruit! I need you to uncover the data in the Cycon archive and find out what happened. Some of its encrypted or locked. But I'm sure that there's a way in. keep an eye out for codes and passwords. Keep checking my dairy area, I'll be sending you messages from here in Future gate. And remember, Cybele is always here to help you. Think you can do it? This is Caleb, signing out."

When the message finished playing, Ember just stared at her laptop screen for a moment. She felt completely stunned. All that talk about the… what was it, Roboidz? It was weird, not to mention unbelievable. Ember sat back in her chair, wondering what to do. She felt that it was just some kind of joke Bryce was pulling to throw her off finishing her practice run. Although Bryce was really clever, Ember doubted that he knew how to pull of something like this, although she wouldn't past it past him to do something like that.

Just as Ember was about to click the icon that was marked Archive, the door opened and Bryce stepped into the room.

"Yo sis!" Bryce said as he came into the room.

Ember jumped and slammed the lid of her laptop closed so Bryce couldn't see what she was doing.

"Still not done hacking the computer?" Bryce grinned.

"Nah, got bored." Ember shook her head.

"Yeah right." Bryce smirked. "Anyways, mum's got dinner ready."

"I'll be right down." Ember nodded.

She watched as Bryce left her bedroom before she opened her laptop again, which was still showing an image of Caleb. Ember spent a few more moments staring at the screen, wondering whether she should take the message seriously or not. In the end, Ember pushed her laptop closed and went downstairs for dinner.

As Ember sat with her mum and brother at the dining table, she couldn't keep her mind of the video message. Something still told her that it was all some sort of joke, but for some reason she felt that she should at least give it a go, even if it was all a game or something.

"Are you alright, Emmy?" Melissa, Ember's and Bryce's mum asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Ember replied. "Why?"

"You look a little zoned out." Melissa remarked. "That's all."

"Emmy always does that." Bryce grinned.

"Stop calling me that! I'm not a child anymore!" Ember exclaimed, reaching over to slap her brother.

That nickname had come into existence when Ember had just started to learn how to talk when she was a baby. She hadn't been able to pronounce her own name properly so her family had picked up on that as a nickname. It was a funny nickname when she was 10, but being 20 now, it just sounded patronizing.

"Anyway, I'm fine, mum, just thinking about what school projects I've got to do." Ember said.

Melissa just nodded and Ember turned back to her plate, not feeling all that hungry anymore. As soon as Melissa allowed Ember to be excused, she ran up to her bedroom and opened her laptop. She immediately clicked on the icon marked Archive and a new screen appeared.

"Recruit, a new piece of Archive is available." The female voice, probably this Cybele person, said.

Ember had a good look at the screen in front of her. The 'Archive' was basically a triangle divided in four red triangles in the points and one in the middle. The middle red triangle was surrounded by multiple smaller triangles. Some of them were accessible, but some of them appeared to be locked. Ember glanced at the bottom right hand corner of the screen to find that the icon marked 'Caleb' was flashing red. When Ember clicked on it, she found that there was a video message waiting for her that had been marked 'work in progress.' When she hit play, she found out that it was another video message from Caleb.

"I'll let you into a secret." Caleb said. "I think I've found a way to get recruits here, actually here in Future Gate. My world, my time. I won't bore you with the details; let's just say that it's a work in progress. But I'm confident that it can be done."

With that the video was over and Ember frowned to herself as the message sank in. so basically this Caleb person was going to bring people from 2010 to 2110.

"Yeah right..." Ember muttered to herself, knowing that time travel was simply impossible.

Ember clicked back to the Archive screen and when she clicked on one of the accessible triangles, she found that it was a video blog from a girl called Angel Grace. When Ember checked the date, she saw that it was marked as 15/09/2067.

"Impossible…" Ember muttered. "This can't be real…"

Although Ember believed that all of it was fake; she couldn't help he curiosity which was screaming to be satisfied so she ended up playing the blog message. The girl talked with a heavy Scottish accent and went on about an alien conflict and how battleships were sent out for peace keeping duties. To Ember it seemed that this Angel Grace girl was a conspiracy freak, trying to find answers in things that seemed innocent. Although, Ember wasn't all that sure about the Alien thing... that would mean that in 57 years time Earth would have Alien contacts. If you asked her that seemed a little too much Doctor Who-ish.

Ember leaned back in her chair; she was getting there in being convinced that all of this wasn't just some kind of elaborate joke. Bryce would never set up something of this scale when it came to pulling jokes on her.

Instead she grabbed her mini laptop and logged onto the website for the hacker's community she and Bryce were in. The community was called Spider's Bite. The two leaders of the community were a couple and they were called Spider and Bite, so that's how the name Spider's Bite was born.

As soon as she logged onto the website, she got an IM from Data, one of her best friends in the community. Data was one of the higher rank members in the community and he'd been a great help to Ember in the past when she needed help with something. Originally Bryce had been the one to introduce Data to her. Ember clicked on the IM and couldn't help but smile.

**Data:** Jupi! How's it hanging, girl?

Ember shook her head with a smile as she started typing.

**Jupiter:** Data! Everything's fine on this end, what about you?

**Data:** same old. So got a project you're working on or something?

**Jupiter:** not really, though I was meaning to talk to you.

**Data:** uh oh, that can't be good. :P

**Jupiter:** very funny, Data, but seriously, I was wondering has anyone else in the community gotten a message from 2110.

**Data:** no, not that I know of… Whose 2110? A rookie hacker or something?

**Jupiter:** don't know. Anyway, got to get going, thanks Data.

**Data:** see you later, Jupi.

Ember smiled a little as she shut down her mini laptop before turning back to her other laptop. Everyone in Spider's Bite knew that if Data didn't know the answer of a question that it probably didn't exist. She'd chosen the name Jupiter for herself as a hacker's ID, not because Jupiter was the Roman upper god, but because he was the god of Thunder. Bryce had come up with that because everyone in the family knew that Ember tended to have a thunderous temper sometimes.

Ember sighed as she turned on some music, seriously wondering whether to ignore the messages and assume that it was all fake or to actually take it seriously. In the end she decided to keep working on the archive and see what happened.

One of the other triangles that Ember clicked was a news report from 21/12/2020 and it talked about some kind of Christmas toy that was becoming really popular. It was a Roboid, which was basically some kind robot like toy, the next few squares showed the Roboid toys' blueprints that had been copyrighted by a company called Gant Toys Ltd.

Ember went online to see if there was a company with that name around, but the only thing she found was a Face book page of guy with that last name, but it wasn't anyone well known and he didn't own a company. In the next few files that Ember managed to unlock, there was a photo of a cute little boy in an orange jumper that had '3 years old, in mummy's lab' written underneath it. The last open square was an audio file that had been marked top secret and it was dated 20/072034. Ember bit her lip as she let the audio file play out.

"Eclipse, Jupiter, Moon!" a man's voice yelled, sounding panicked.

Ember stopped the audio file without even listening all the way to the end. She was completely freaked out by the message. There was something really unnerving about it, although she had a suspicion that she was freaking out because the man had said Eclipse, which was Bryce's nickname in the hacker's community, her own hacker's nickname and that of a good friend of hers, who was called Moon.

Ember knew that it could've been a silly coincidence, but it was terribly unnerving, meaning that she couldn't help the shudder that passed over her spine as she clicked back to the archive screen only to find that somehow more bits of the archive were now available to be selected, not to mention unlocked as majority seemed to be locked. She jumped a little when she heard a crash close and she looked out of the window only to find that a car had crashed into a lamp post.

Ember dropped herself down on her chair with a sigh. Crashes like that weren't all that uncommon in the neighbourhood she lived in. in fact they were getting more and more frequent. The neighbourhood she lived had been marked a 'problem area' by the council, due to the fact that there were a lot of young people around who loved to get drunk then cause trouble and when faced with the consequences, meaning getting arrested, would only cause more problem.

The reason that Ember hadn't gone out to see if the driver was alright was simply due to the fact that the driver had been drunk, which was also the reason why they'd crashed into the lamppost. Ember felt that it was the person's own fault for getting injured, especially if they were drunk. Now Ember wasn't a heartless person, she'd give her live if she had too to save a stranger, but when alcohol was playing a part in causes of car crashes, she'd rather just sit back and let other people deal with it, primarily because she had an unexplainable fear for people who were drunk and because her father had drank himself to death.

After a quick glance at her alarm clock she found that it was well past midnight and seeing that the following day was a school day, Ember decided to leave the Archive for what it was and get some much needed sleep.

The following day, Ember took her laptop with her to school so that she could work on the archive in between lessons. Although when she opened her laptop and logged onto the Archive during Math's, the teacher thought she was playing a game during class, so she was kicked out of class.

"Stupid teacher..." Ember muttered to herself, dropping down on a chair in the cantina. "It's not as if the lesson was actually interesting or something. What am I going to need Math's for anyway... It's not like I'm going to become a scientist or anything."

"Talking to yourself again, Jupi?" Tommy asked as he dropped down beside her. "You know that's the first sign of insanity right?"

"Well, you know I lost my mind a long time ago, Moony." Ember grinned, glancing over at her friend.

"Yeah, probably it's my fault." Tommy grinned. "So, what did you get kicked out for?"

"Playing a game in class on my laptop." Ember shrugged.

"That's all?" Tommy asked. "Is it me or is Bennett getting more and more strict?"

"Suppose its old age." Ember shrugged. "God knows how old Bennett actually is. If you ask me, she was around when the dinosaurs were walking about on the planet."

Ember smiled a little as Tommy laughed. Tommy was one of her best friends in the whole school, probably her only friend. He'd gotten into the hacking community through Ember and had chosen the name Moon for himself. Why Ember couldn't possibly imagine, but still, it suited him.

"What about you?" Ember asked. "What're you doing out of class?"

"Got kicked out too." Tommy smirked. "Tried to hack into the school system."

"A miracle you didn't get kicked out." Ember remarked. "Remember when Bryce did that?"

"Who could forget?" Tommy laughed.

Ember smiled as she remembered the time that Bryce had hacked into the school system; the whole school had gone berserk. The alarm systems had gone off, the fire extinguishers in the ceiling had gone of soaking everything and everything and that meant that the school had to be closed down for at least a week because of the water damage. Bryce was kicked out of school because of it, because of some kind of miracle, charges hadn't been pressed.

"Not something I'm likely to try again though." Tommy remarked as Ember grabbed her laptop and opened it. "So, what's that you're working on?"

"I'm not sure myself." Ember replied. "it's kind of weird... last night I tried to hack through some firewalls that Bryce put up, just as I'm about to breach through the last firewall, I get this transmission that says there's a broadcast from the year 2110 waiting for me."

"The year 2110?" Tommy repeated. "That sounds like a joke Bryce pulled."

"That's what I thought at first." Ember nodded. "But then I start looking through the program, and it's so elaborate. The more I unlock, the more information I get. this can't just be some kind of joke that Bryce pulled, because the people who are shown in the video's and the voices that I've heard, they don't sound anything like people I know, and I know all of the people that Bryce knows..."

"Maybe he hired people?" Tommy suggested. "I wouldn't take all of this too seriously, Ember."

"Maybe..." Ember said slowly.

The conversation with Tommy had convinced Ember to leave the Archive alone. But a week or so later, people in the school started disappearing, primarily, younger students. The school was put on high alert because of this and it turned out that all the kids had been playing a game. Tommy and Ember sat side by side in the assembly hall when the headmaster was giving a speech about the game that the children had been playing.

"Oh my god." Tommy whispered beside Ember, who was just stunned into silence. "That's the game you were playing..."

"I know." Ember whispered back.

"If you had played that game all the way to the end..." Tommy started.

"Shut it." Ember hissed, unable to believe what was going on.

She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees as she thought about what could've happened while the headmaster kept going with his speech.

"No." Ember said, not bothering to keep whispering as she sat up. "There's got to be more going on. A game can't make children disappear."

"Ember..." Tommy started as Ember got to her feet.

"I don't know what the hell is going on, but I'm going to find out." Ember replied.

"Miss Tennant, sit back down." The headmaster ordered.

"No." Ember replied, turning to face the headmaster. "I'm not going to sit back down. I'm going to find out what happened to those kids. And you can't stop me."

With that Ember turned around and started running down the hall of the assembly hall, aware that all eyes were on her as she'd been sitting at the front off the hall. She ran all the way back to the class room that her class had been in when the announcement for the assembly came and once there, she grabbed her stuff before running out of the school. Ember knew that there were going to be consequences for running out on the assembly, but she didn't care. All she knew was the urge to find out what had happened to the children that had disappeared.

**So this is the end of the first chapter. Thanks for taking the time to read and please let me know what you think.:) I hoped you like it!**

**~ Abby:)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello!  
First of all, thanks to LokiLover, hecticlife and Oddments and Tweaks for reviewing!:D It made me very, very happy to know that people actually like what I write!  
I think I should explain a few things though, LokiLover asked me how old Ember is. She's 20 years old. I based the school in the story on how the school system in the Netherlands work as I'm not familiar with the English school system, but basically, after you finished elementary school, you go to a different school when you're around 13 and you can stay there until you're like 25 without having to go to university. Hope this clears up things a little:)  
Anywho, onto chapter two! Enjoy!:D**

**Chapter 2: Recon**

Ember ran all the way home and as soon as she got there, she ran up to her room, knowing that no-one else was home as Bryce was still at school and her mum was at work. Ember opened her laptop and hacked into the police data base without any difficulty and even though that she knew what she was doing was highly illegal, she didn't really care at the moment. The urge to find out what had happened to the missing children was so strong that she couldn't think about anything else but finding out what had happened to them.

The second that Ember had gotten all the information from the police database she was able to access, without alerting the security programs that someone was hacking into the system, Ember covered her tracks. She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk as she started to read the information she had printed out. She sighed when she found out that several of the children had older siblings and she ran a hand through her hair, knowing only all too well what it was like to lose a younger sibling.

5 years earlier, when Ember was 15, her little brother Danny had gone missing without a trace. 2 weeks later, Danny's body had turned up. The little boy had been murdered at age 9 and the killer was never found. Ember remembered all of it like it was yesterday and because the memories were so fresh, it just fed the urge to find the missing children.

"Keep it together, Ember." She chided herself as she wiped the stray tear from her face. "Focus on the job."

Ember grabbed her laptop and logged onto the Spider's Bite website to be able to keep an eye on it in case someone else had gotten the transmission from Caleb. The second that she logged onto the website, she found out that the little sister from one of the members, Phantom, had gone missing. Everyone in the community then agreed to do everything in their powers to help Phantom find out what had happened to her little sister.

Ember decided to keep quiet that she knew about the game and that she had actually been playing it, knowing that everyone would attempt to hack into her laptop to see what the game was actually about. Instead, she and Bryce, who had logged onto the website from his school, co-ordinated the information gathering as Bryce felt the same way that Ember had. Neither of them wanted anyone to go through what they had when it came to losing a little sibling.

At the end of the afternoon, Ember and Bryce called the information gathering to a stop as the hackers, which had been spread out across the UK, had been hacking into various databases and they didn't want to draw too much attention to themselves. The group that hadn't been hacking into the police databases ended up laying down fake digital trials for the police to follow in case the police had found out that their databases had been hacked. All the information was then sent to Ember and Bryce, who compiled all the information that the hackers had gathered.

In the end, the information gathering had proven to be useless as the information that the police possessed was next to nothing. All they knew that the children had disappeared into thin air without a single warning or a note of where they were going. There were the missing person's reports with the personal details of the kids and 2 eye witness accounts that talked about how they had seen a child disappearing into thin air as they were walking along the street. The thing was that both accounts weren't trust worthy at all as the two people who'd seen the kid disappear were high as a kite.

Ember sighed as she leaned back in her seat and rubbed her eyes after staring at the screen for so long. She still didn't know what was going on, but she was starting to have the feeling that this Caleb person was the cause of all of it. Although to Ember it seemed highly unlikely that he was actually the one behind the 'kidnappings' as the police called it.

Ember wasn't great at reading people, but it didn't seem like it to her that Caleb was someone with bad intentions. On the contrary, there didn't seem to be an ounce of evil in him, let alone the intention of wanting to kidnap children. Ember sighed as she brushed her brown bangs from her face and turned back to face the bigger laptop. Since finding out that the game could be the cause of the disappearances, although Ember didn't have a clue how that was supposed to work, she hadn't touched the laptop at all other than to put it on her desk and switch it on again.

She looked at the laptop for a few moments before making the decision to keep making progress through the Archive. She raised an eyebrow when she saw that there was a message waiting for her from Caleb. When she let the message play out, Ember made sure to pay extra attention to the way Caleb behaved, taking note of every gesture and twitch of Caleb's face.

"Greetings from 2110." Caleb said as soon as the message started to play out. "There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that I had a run-in with a Roboid earlier on; couple of scrapes, but I'll live. The good news, I can get real live recruits here to FutureGate. We'll be battling Roboidz before you know it."

Ember sat back after watching the message a few times, each time she was getting more and more convinced of the fact that Caleb didn't seem the type of person to kidnap children.

"What to do..." Ember muttered to herself as she thought. "Come on, Ember, think..."

Ember looked up as Bryce stepped into the room and she quickly closed her laptop.

"I can't believe this is happening." Bryce remarked.

"Me neither." Ember agreed. "We're just going to have to keep working, find any sort of clue we can."

"Maybe if we could get our hands on this game we could see what happened to the kids." Bryce remarked. "Play it to the end…"

"I don't think that's a good idea." Ember shook her head.

She was actually lying, she thought that it was a great idea, but she also felt that if anyone should be the one to play the game it should be her. She didn't want to risk anything happening to her brother.

"We don't know what could happen, we can't take that risk." Ember continued.

"Yeah, true." Bryce sighed. "Alright, I'm going to get back to work, you get a hold of Moon and tell him we're going to need help from his contacts inside the police station. We need someone to keep an ear out for us."

"Consider it done." Ember nodded.

She watched as Bryce left the room and he closed the door behind her. Ember sighed as she turned to her mini-laptop and wrote Tommy a quick e-mail. What Bryce didn't know was that Tommy was actually Moon, or that the contact in the police station was Tommy's older brother. After writing the e-mail and sending it off, Ember turned to her bigger laptop to start playing the game again.

Behind the first red triangle was a simple game that she got through without any trouble and after she had beaten the game, three more triangles had been unlocked. After accessing them, she found out that a girl called Laura Gant had made an audio diary and she talked about how her father had gone to make a new deal for the toys which she felt was a waste of time, just like inventing the toys. Ember felt a shudder passing down her spine as she listened to Laura talking about something called Cyconetics, which was basically a robot with a consciousness. It sounded a little to Terminator for Ember's taste, so she quickly clicked the audio diary away. The other two squares didn't hold that much information that she felt was important so she just ignored them.

Ember jumped a little when Cybele's voice signalled there was a new video message and she sighed as she allowed herself to relax. She clicked on Caleb's video diary area and clicked on the new message.

"Hey there, recruit, how's life in your world?" Caleb asked, looking sad for some reason. "Mine's... well, it's pretty scary actually. At least I've got Cybele to talk to. Whoever and wherever and whenever you are, I hope you can hear me; otherwise I'm just talking to myself. Anyway, I think the Roboidz are up to something. I think they've messed with the communications systems I've set up. I hope this message gets through. You're my link to another world, another time. And they're here! I can't believe it, the recruits are actually here! It's a little strange, hearing other human voices and seeing human faces, but strange in a good way. When my recruits get going, those Roboidz won't know what hit them!"

Ember frowned a little, wondering what Caleb meant with that there were recruits there. She had no idea what it was supposed to mean, but she had a feeling that she would find out if she kept working on the Archive. She watched the message a few more times and again she didn't see any indication that Caleb was the person behind the kidnappings. It looked like he really didn't have a single ounce of evil in him, if anything he seemed to be full of innocence.

"Bugger..." Ember sighed, leaning back against her seat again.

She glanced over to her mini laptop to find that she'd gotten an IM from Tommy.

**Moon:** got some info for you, Ember.

**Jupiter:** really? What is it?

**Moon:** one of the kids was found.

**Jupiter:** seriously? Where? Who?

**Moon:** Mickey didn't give me a name, but it's one of the kids from school. They came back this morning, according to Mickey she's going to be back at school tomorrow.

**Jupiter:** Brilliant! Thanks, Tommy.

With that Ember logged of and went back to the Spider's Bite website to announce that one of the children had come back. Once the message had spread that one of the children had come back, everyone became really hopeful that Phantom's little sister would come home.

Seeing that it was late in the evening, Ember couldn't go and find out who had come back, but she decided that she'd find out the following day at school. Seeing as it had been such a big deal that kids had gone missing, seeing as there had been a safety assembly and all, the kid was bound to get a lot of attention from the other students at school.

The following morning, Ember went school and sure enough, everyone was crowding around a girl. Ember didn't know the girl at all other than seeing her file from the missing persons report and from seeing her pass by in the corridors, but she had to talk to her about the game.

"Alright you lot!" Ember said loudly.

The kids that were surrounding the girl were mostly the younger students so she could easily scare them off.

"Clear off!" Ember said loudly as she walked over to the group. "She's been through enough already, so move it!"

The younger students turned to face Ember, who had straightened her back, pulling herself up to her full height. She wasn't much taller than the younger students, being 5'5 foot in height, but the students did seem to be impressed by her being loud-mouthed.

"Go on!" Ember said loudly. "Clear off!"

She pushed her way past the students and walked over to the girl, putting her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Come on." Ember said, seeing that the girl looked really uncomfortable. "Let's get you out of here."

Ember led the girl away from the other students and walked her inside. The two of them found an empty class room and Ember closed the door behind her.

"Thank you." The girl said.

"You're welcome." Ember replied. "I'm Ember, by the way. What about you?"

"I'm Hannah." The girl replied.

"Nice to meet you, Hannah." Ember smiled as she dropped down beside her on top of one of the tables. "Hannah, there's something I've got to ask…"

"You want to know about where I was, don't you?" Hannah asked.

"Something like that, yeah." Ember nodded.

"You wouldn't believe me." Hannah shook her head.

"You'd be surprised." Ember smiled. "Because I've got a feeling I kind of know already."

"Yeah right." Hannah scoffed, making Ember smile.

"It's to do with 2110, isn't it?" Ember asked which made Hannah's eyes light up.

"You know about Caleb?" she asked.

"Yeah." Ember nodded, pulling out her laptop and showing her the screen of the archive.

"I got that too!" Hannah exclaimed, looking excited. "If you finish that you'll get a message of Caleb saying he'll get you to 2110 if you want!"

"So Caleb is actually real?" Ember asked.

"Yeah!" Hannah nodded. "He's really cool! A bit strange at times and usually rubbish jokes but cool! And he's really good at juggling!"

"I believe you." Ember smiled at Hannah's enthusiasm over Caleb. "So you went there because you wanted to? Not because Caleb made you?"

"He didn't make any of us go!" Hannah said, looking a little offended. "It was our own choice! Besides, who wouldn't want to kick some can-head butt?"

"Can-head butt?" Ember repeated, raising an eyebrow as she wondered whether she should start laughing or not. "What's a can-head?"

"A Roboid, of course." Hannah stated matter of factly.

"Right…" Ember said slowly.

"They're like really big and really scary, but it's really cool to beat one!" Hannah continued excitedly.

"I believe you." Ember smiled.

**So this is it for chapter 2, hoped you liked it!  
Let me know what you think and thanks for reading:)**

**~ Abby**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello! Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It's really nice to know people like the story, plus it's a motivator to keep writing!:D  
****Here's chapter 3!**

Chapter 3: Getting to FutureGate

Ember had talked to Hannah for another half hour before the lessons started and she found out loads more about Caleb and his fight against the Roboidz. Apparently he was the last human or something and he had to be the one to defeat the Roboidz to get Earth back under human control.

Ember couldn't help but let her mind wander during the lessons of that day. She wondered how Caleb did it, being alone on that ship that Hannah had called FutureGate and fight the Roboidz on his own for 5 years on end without any company other than Cybele, which according to Hannah was a sentient computer or at least that's what Caleb had told her and the other 'recruits'. Ember was also glad that she now knew the truth about what was going on, although now she was faced with the question, what she was going to do with the information she had found out.

If Ember was honest to herself, she wanted to meet Caleb and see whether she could help out in his fight, but seeing as all the kids that volunteered for the mission were in around the 12 to 14 age category, she felt that it was going to be very unlikely to get picked out to join the mission, but that wasn't going to stop Ember from trying.

At the end of the day, after the detention she'd gotten for being rude to the headmaster and running out of the assembly, Ember went home and logged onto the Archive.

"Okay, Archive, let's see what you've got." Ember said to herself as she clicked on a new triangle.

By the time that the sun was starting to rise and a new day was about to begin, Ember had completed the Cycon Archive and her head was hurting because of all the information she'd listened too, watched and read. She had been kind of surprised to find out that Laura Gant was the one who had created the Roboidz. And after some more hacking into the Archive as she wanted to find out as much as she could, she found out that Laura Gant, the creator of the Roboidz, was actually Caleb's mother, which had to be the biggest shock of all.

"Bloody hell..." Ember sighed leaning back in her seat as she rubbed her eyes.

She looked up when the icon for Caleb's video blog started flashing, telling her there was a new message waiting for her. For a moment Ember debated if she should watch the message right away or to wait until she'd had some sleep as her eyes were burning terribly. Although in the end, her curiosity won out and Ember let the message play out.

"Hey recruit!" Caleb said, looking excited. "You did it! You finished the archive!"

Ember couldn't help but allow herself a small smile for managing to complete the Archive after all. There had been a point when she thought she wouldn't be able to complete the Archive at all because of that blasted logic game.

"Now." Caleb said, looking more seriously at the camera. "Everything you saw in the archive is real. I got no idea what's in the Archive, I can't access it but, seeing as you completed the game, you are now selected to be one of my recruits, here on FutureGate! If you want in, all you have to do is let me know. If all goes well, there should be a little text box in your screen somewhere."

As if on cue, the text box appeared at the bottom of the screen at the same time the message stopped.

"Well, no need to thank me or anything..." Ember muttered, shaking her head.

She thought that Caleb had probably been too excited about something and completely forgotten to say a little 'thank you', not that Ember it was a big deal to Ember that he hadn't said anything, but it would've been nice. She clicked on the text box and started typing.

'Count me in, Caleb. ~Ember'

With that she moved the cursor over the send button and after a few moments of hesitation, she clicked it. Ember leaned back in her chair as the message was being sent, wondering if she had made the right decision or not, seeing that she didn't want her mum and brother to freak out. In the end, she figured that she'd leave a message for them that she was alright before she left for FutureGate, if she even was going to be summoned to fight in the resistance.

Ember turned off her laptop and switched of her desk lamp. After getting changed for bed, Ember lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering about what it would be like fighting Roboidz and whether it would be as awesome as Hannah had told her. After a few moments of thought, she felt that she was going to have to find out for herself if it was that awesome. With that thought lingering in the back of her mind, Ember closed her eyes. Just before she felt asleep, Ember could see a few flashes of some kind of green light.

When Ember woke up, the first thing she realized that she had a headache; the second thing was that she wasn't lying in her own, soft bed anymore. Instead she was lying on top of some kind of cold metal grating and as Ember opened her eyes, she found that she was in a cold dark space. It looked almost exactly like how Hannah had described one of the corridors in FutureGate.

"Oh my god..." Ember whispered to herself as she climbed to her feet.

As soon as she was standing, she noticed that she was standing with her bare feet on metal grating and it was hurting a little. Ember realized that the first priority should be finding shoes, but she figured that it was better to find Caleb first. So she slowly started to walk along the gantry, feeling the metal pressing into her feet as she did. As Ember turned a corner, she came to a halt when she saw what was in front of her. She had come face to face with a robot, to be more precise, a Roboid. It looked exactly like the ones from the news report about the toys in the Cycon Archive, only this one was bigger. And by bigger, she meant a lot bigger, think 9 feet tall bigger.

Ember had been stunned into silence by seeing the gray Roboid, something that didn't happen all that often when she was stunned. She stood completely still as the Roboid's red light passed over her face before it took a step forward. Ember let out a frightened scream as she turned on her heel and started to run away from the Roboid as fast as she could.

She could hear the Roboid following her so she ducked into the first dark alcove that she came across. Ember scrambled back as far as she could and kept completely still as she covered her mouth against the gasp of fear that threatened to escape her as the Roboid came to a halt in front of the alcove she'd hidden in. The red beam of light passed over Ember's face again and for a moment she thought that the Roboid would move on, but instead it started to reach its metal hand into the alcove to try and grab Ember. Ember screamed again as she pushed herself back against the metal pipe that was big enough to stop her from escaping further into the alcove.

"Stay away from me!" Ember screamed, ducking as the Roboid made a grab for her head.

There was barely any room to move in the alcove, which meant that there was barely any room for Ember to dodge the grabs that the Roboid made for her. There wasn't anything there that could be used as a weapon either, so the only way she was going to be able to escape was as either a paste like spot on the ground or when the Roboid would get bored and leave. The latter option seemed less likely as the Roboid looked determined to catch her, if robots could even look determined.

Ember gasped as the Roboid caught hold of the hem of her tank top and started to pull on it. Ember grabbed hold of the tank top herself close to where the Roboid had grabbed hold of it and pulled on it too, hoping that the fabric would tear. It didn't happen though and the Roboid pulled Ember forwards without a single effort at all while Ember tried her hardest to pull back.

"Let go, you overgrown garbage bin!" Ember yelled.

It didn't do any good however as the Roboid pulled Ember out of the alcove without any trouble. Just as the Roboid started to reach for Ember with its other metal hand, the fabric of her tank top tore. Ember stumbled back a few paces but managed to catch her fall on the metal railing. The Roboid didn't seem confused by the fact that he'd only managed to tear a piece of fabric from Ember's tank top, but as soon as Ember realized what had happened, she started to run back the way she came as fast as she could.

Ember didn't get all that far as she ran into something that didn't even look human although it was about the size of a normal adult. It was wearing a sort of iron mask with two red lights for eyes. Its clothes, if you could call it that, looked as if they were made from black plastic and she could see that there were plastic tubes coming out of its back that seemed to attach to the back of the skull.

Ember skidded to a halt and stared at the thing before she noticed the smell that was coming of it. It was something like she had never smelled before, but it made her feel sick to the point that she felt bile rising in her throat. The thing came towards her and it reached out a hand as if it was going to grab her.

"Don't you even think about it, tin face..." Ember said before ducking past the thing as it made a grab for her.

Ember started to run again, not sure where she was going but after a few minutes; she came across a hatch that had a small window in it. As she looked through it, she could see that the door led outside onto the deck. Ember grabbed hold of the wheel that would unlock the door and tried to turn it, but the wheel was stuck.

"Open up!" Ember yelled, yanking on the wheel. "Bloody piece of scrap metal!"

Ember jumped when she heard footsteps behind her, as she turned around, she found that it was the Roboid and the tin face that were coming towards her. Ember pulled on the wheel as hard as she could, feeling desperation sink in. When the wheel finally started to turn, the desperation was reaching its peak as the Roboid and the tin face were getting closer by the second. As soon as the door opened, Ember slipped through and yanked the door closed behind her. After turning the wheel to lock it, she grabbed a metal bar of the ground and jammed it through the bars of the wheel and through something that looked like a drain-pipe to lock the door completely.

Ember yelled in shock when the tin face slammed its hand against the window of the door and she took a few steps back only to realize that a cold wind was blowing through her long brown hair. Feeling slightly reassured that the Roboid and the tin face weren't smart enough to realize they could easily get through the door if the Roboid ripped it off its hinges; she turned her back on the door only to face open waters.

She remembered that Hannah had told her that FutureGate was a ship, but seeing it was a 100 years into the future, she had expected that it would've been a space ship or something.

"Oh my god..." Ember whispered as she looked out over the waters with the mountains beyond that.

She felt a shudder running down her spine because of the cold window that was blowing her hair into her face the whole time. Her pyjamas weren't helping her to keep warm either, seeing as it was just a pair of sweatpants and a thin tank top which now had a piece of fabric missing on the right of her stomach.

"Bloody hell..." Ember muttered while she shivered.

She crossed her arms over her chest in a futile attempt to stay at least a little warm as she walked across the deck to find another way into the ship. Inside the ship, it might've been cold, but it was warmer in there than it was standing outside on the deck.

Now that the initial adrenaline of seeing the Roboid and the tin face was starting to wear off, Ember could feel her feet starting to ache slightly. Although she'd worry about that later and get back inside the ship before any more Roboidz or those tin faces found her. She walked to the front of the ship only to find that on the lower level deck were dozens of Roboidz. Not just the gray version, but the yellow and red versions too.

"Whoa..." Ember said slowly as she watched all the Roboidz either moving crates around or shooting targets with what looked like red laser bolts. "This is... just completely mental..."

Ember didn't have the time to wonder about whether it was an insane move to let Caleb know that she would help out in his fight or not, as one of the red Roboidz turned to look directly at her. Ember knew that the Roboid had seen her when it raised the gun on one of its arms.

"Oh no." Ember said, knowing what was about to happen.

**So that's it for chapter 3.  
****Hoped you liked it and thanks for reading!  
Let me know what you think!:D  
~ Abby**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello!  
here's chapter 4! Thanks to everyone who took the time to review!  
Enjoy!:D**

Chapter 4: Caleb

Ember stared at the Roboid that was aiming its weapon at her. Seconds before the Roboid fired it; Ember threw herself down to the deck and covered her head. She felt the heat of the laser bolt as it passed over her and after hearing that it had made impact, she looked up to find that there was now a black scorch mark on the wall behind her right where her head had been.

"Oh my god…" Ember gasped.

She got to her knees and looked over the edge of the deck to find that all the Roboidz were now looking up and she knew that she'd been busted. Not to mention that she knew that she had to get out of there as soon as possible before all the Roboidz that were down on the deck decided to come after her. Ember scrambled to her feet and ran back to the door she had escaped through only to find that the tin face was still there, it was clearly waiting for her.

Knowing that the door wasn't an option anymore, she ran over to the next door just as a few red Roboidz were coming up a ramp that must have led down to the lower decks. Ember skidded to a halt at the door and started to pull on the wheel to unlock the door.

"Come on!" Ember yelled as three Roboidz lined up close to her. "Open up! Please!"

She looked up at the Roboidz and saw that they were raising their arms just as the wheel started to turn and the door unlocked. Ember pulled the door open as fast as she could and dived into the interior of the ship as the three Roboidz fired. The laser bolts hit the door and it slammed shut with a loud clang that made Ember gasp as she scrambled to her feet. She rushed over to the door and grabbed hold of the wheel to pull the door closed. The iron of the door however was so hot that Ember burned her hands on them. She gasped in pain as she glanced down at her hands which were already turning bright red when she heard the footsteps of the Roboidz coming closer.

Ember didn't waste another moment as she started to run away from the door as fast as she could. Just after she rounded a corner, a gloved hand shot out and she ran straight against it. Because of her running into the arm, the breath was knocked out of her as the arm grabbed hold of her around the waist and pulled her back into the shadow of a dark alcove.

Before Ember could get her breath back, another hand was clamped loosely over her mouth as someone pulled her further into the shadows, out of sight from the Roboidz. For a moment Ember started to panic and struggle against the person's grip when they started to talk.

"Keep still." A man's voice whispered close to her ear. "Keep still, you'll be alright."

Ember stopped her struggling as she recognized the voice Caleb's voice. She stood completely still as the footsteps of the Roboidz came closer. Caleb's hand loosened a little and Ember pushed it away from her mouth as the two of them watched the three Roboidz walking past their hiding place. They kept standing still until the Roboidz' footsteps died away before Ember dared to shrug Caleb's arm off and step out of the alcove.

"They're gone yeah?" Ember asked, looking down the corridor the Roboidz had walked into. "We're safe for now?"

She turned to face Caleb and had a proper look at him. He was taller than she was, maybe about 5'11 feet in height. He didn't look any different from the video messages, but now she could see that he was wearing a thigh pack on his right leg.

"For now." Caleb agreed. "Who are you?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Ember said, turning to face Caleb only to find that he was looking completely confused. "I'm Ember."

"You're Ember?" Caleb repeated.

"Yeah." Ember nodded, crossing her arms over her chest as she felt the cold again. "That's me, Ember Tennant."

"But I thought you were a kid." Caleb replied, still looking confused. "You're... you're..."

"Cute?" Ember suggested, teasing a little.

"Old." Caleb replied.

"I'm only 20 years old, thanks very much." Ember replied, feeling offended.

"But you're an adult." Caleb said.

"So?" Ember shrugged, not seeing what was so important about that.

"You're an adult." Caleb repeated. "Adults don't believe me!"

"Well, I'm not like most adults." Ember replied. "I believe you, and in saying that, I mean I believe everything."

"Fantastic!" Caleb exclaimed.

The next thing Ember knew was that Caleb had grabbed her into a bear hug that practically lifted her of her feet.

"Oi!" Ember exclaimed. "D'you mind? I'm not a teddy bear! Put me down!"

"Sorry." Caleb said, putting Ember back on her feet.

"Give a girl a warning next time." Ember remarked. "You scared the pants of me!"

"Alright, sorry." Caleb replied, looking a little put out by Ember's reaction.

"It's okay." Ember said, feeling a little stupid for reacting like that. "You just caught me off guard, that's all."

"Come on, I know a place we can talk safely." Caleb said, grinning widely.

Caleb grabbed hold of her hand and started to drag her along as he started to run, leaving Ember with no other choice but to follow. At first she had a little trouble to keep up with him, but as soon as they came across a few of the tin faces, adrenaline started surging through Ember's body and she didn't have any trouble to keep up with him at all.

Because of all the Roboidz and tin faces, which Caleb had called Shades, which were roaming in the corridors, they had to take various detours or keep waiting in an alcove out of sight until the enemy had passed and were gone before they could move on. Eventually a half hour later, they reached the safety of Caleb's Lair.

The first thing that Ember noticed when she walked into the lair was that it looked a little like a bachelor pad. There were all kinds of stuff spread around the room on every available surface. Most of them were broken bits and pieces of computers and radios. There were blueprints covering the wall, although Ember didn't have any idea what they were supposed to be.

"Welcome to my lair." Caleb said, turning to face Ember with a proud grin. "What do you think?"

"It's... nice" Ember replied, not knowing what else to say and not wanting to offend Caleb.

Ember walked around the lair for a few moments and frowned when she found a guitar standing against one of the walls. For a moment she wondered where Caleb would've found it, but then she realized that he had probably gone scavenging through the ship at some point.

"Caleb, I don't want to be rude, but d'you have some clothes I could maybe borrow?" Ember asked, turning to face Caleb, who was just silently watching her with a curious look on his face. "I mean, I'm starting to get a little bit cold..."

"Yeah, of course!" Caleb replied before disappearing through another doorway.

Ember followed him and walked into some kind of store/bathroom. There were boxes on one side of the room while there was a deep bowl standing on a small table on the other side as well as something that looked like a makeshift toilet. As Caleb went looking through some boxes, Ember looked up at the rig that had been set up above the bowl. It looked like Caleb had grabbed different bits and pieces of metal piping and welded them together as a makeshift water pipe with a tap on the end.

Ember had to admit that even though it looked a little shabby, it was pretty clearly made. She turned to look at Caleb who was going through the boxes. He pulled out several items of clothing which were clearly children sized before tossing them aside without looking where they landed. Ember had to duck or step aside several times by the time that Caleb had started throwing with shoes.

"What size are you?" Caleb asked, tossing a jumpsuit over to her.

"An 8." Ember replied, ducking past another smaller shoe that came towards her. "Could you not throw those shoes about, please?"

"Right, sorry." Caleb said, tossing a set of shoes towards her and a wadded up pair of socks which landed at her feet. "Why would you walk around in that anyway?"

"I was about to fall asleep when there was this green light thingy." Ember replied. "Next thing I know I wake somewhere here in FutureGate."

"Fall asleep?" Caleb repeated. "What would you want to do that for?"

"I don't know." Ember replied as she caught a khaki vest that Caleb threw at her. "You're the one that got me here. Maybe this is a different time frame than where I live? I seriously wouldn't know."

"Ah well, doesn't matter." Caleb shrugged as he turned back to the boxes. "At least you're here now. So, why did you believe me?"

"Mind if get dressed first?" Ember asked. "My feet are starting to freeze off."

"Yeah of course." Caleb nodded.

Caleb crossed his arms over his chest as he waited and Ember raised her eyebrow at him.

"I'm not sure why you're waiting, but I'm not going to change with you watching me." Ember remarked.

"Alright, I'll just wait outside, shall I?" Caleb shrugged after a shooting Ember a slightly confused look.

Ember watched as Caleb left the room and closed the door behind him before she dropped the clothes to the floor. She didn't really need to be alone to get changed seeing as she was going to slip the clothes on over her pajamas to be sure that she'd keep warm, but she needed a few moments to wrap her mind around the things that had happened. When her mind had finished processing everything for the most part, she walked over to one of the boxes and started going through. She pulled a thick long-sleeved shirt from the box and slipped it on over her tank top, after that, she quickly slipped the socks onto her feet and pulled on the army green jumpsuit over her pajama pants. Thinking that she could put on the remaining stuff properly while she talked to Caleb, Ember picked up the khaki vest and the boots. She pushed the door open to find that Caleb was standing at one of the tables, juggling some metal balls.

Ember smiled a little as she remembered Hannah's words as she put the vest down onto of one of the cluttered tables before dropping the boots to the ground, which made Caleb startle and drop the balls that he was juggling.

"Sorry." Ember apologized as the balls clattered to the ground.

"I was working on my record!" Caleb complained, sounding a little like a child who'd been denied candy.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you." Ember replied. "So you wanted to know why I believed you, yeah?"

"Yes of course!" Caleb exclaimed while Ember pushed herself up on the table to put the boots on. "Why did you believe me? All the adults who played my game didn't!"

"To be honest at first I thought that it was all a joke." Ember replied. "But then I met Hannah..."

"Hannah?" Caleb repeated. "But she was vaporized."

"Yeah, not sure what that means..." Ember said slowly. "But, she got back safe and sound..."

"The recruits got send back home?" Caleb exclaimed, making Ember jump a little. "That's brilliant! I thought that they got send somewhere here in 2110!"

Ember stared at Caleb for a moment and wondered if he was going to do that excited shouting thing of his each time he got excited about something as it managed to make her jump each time he did it.

"Apparently not." Ember shrugged, shaking of her thoughts. "But Hannah goes to my school so I went to find her and talked to her about what had happened. She told me about Future Gate, the Roboidz and you. So I started playing the game and got that message from you when I completed it, so I applied and here I am."

While Ember talked, she finished lacing up the boots and jumped of the table before putting her arms through the sleeves of the jumpsuit and zipping it up. There was a lot more that Ember wanted to say about having children fighting Roboidz, but for now, she decided to keep her thoughts to herself, the reason for this being that she didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with Caleb.

"So, where are the other recruits?" Ember asked.

"Gone." Caleb replied, crossing his arms over his chest again. "Vaporized. It's just you."

"Oh..." Ember said slowly. "Well, one is better than none, right?"

"I suppose." Caleb nodded as he turned to look at the blueprints that were pinned to the wall.

"Yeah, because that sounds totally convincing..." Ember muttered quietly to herself.

Ember put on the khaki vest and zipped it up before doing up the buckles of it. She frowned for a moment as she felt that the vest was feeling heavier than she thought it would be. When she checked the pockets, she saw that there were all kinds of small tools in it, ranging from screwdrivers to a small hammer, leading Ember to believe that it used to be a vest from a technician. Instead of pulling all the stuff out of the pockets to lose some of the weight, Ember just zipped the pockets closed again, figuring that the tools could come in handy some time.

"So, tell me." Ember remarked, going to stand beside Caleb and leaning back against the table. "What is it exactly that we're going to be doing?"

"Defeating the Roboidz of course." Caleb replied as if it was obvious.

"Of course." Ember repeated as she picked up one of the metal balls and started to play with it. "But how are we going to do that?"

"I've got to talk to Cybele." Caleb said. "Wait here. Don't go outside alone, it's dangerous."

Before Ember could say anything, Caleb had walked over to the door and left the lair, leaving her on her own.

"This isn't what I imagined fighting in a resistance would be like…" Ember sighed, putting the metal ball down on the table.

**That's it for chapter 4.  
hoped you liked it and thanks for taking the time to read:P  
the next chapter should be up by Friday. i hope i did Caleb's character justice.:)  
As always let me know what you think:D  
~ Abby**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello!  
Here's chapter 5! Thanks to everyone who took the time to review!:D  
Enjoy;)**

Chapter 5: Explorations.

Five minutes after Caleb had left to talk to Cybele, Ember had gotten bored. After grabbing the guitar and trying to play a few notes, she found that the guitar was terribly out of tune so she just put it back. She had even tried a little juggling with the metal balls, but she ended up dropping all of them. One of the balls had ended up falling on her foot, making Ember curse up a storm.

"Bloody metal ball." Ember grumbled as she picked up the offending ball again.

She tossed the ball across the room where it landed in a metal box. Once the pain in her foot had subsided, Ember decided to do a little exploring close to the lair, thinking it wouldn't do that much harm. She grabbed a scrap of paper and pencil so she could write down her route to make sure she'd be able to find her way back to the lair without getting lost.

Getting lost would be really easy seeing that everything looked almost exactly the same. After walking around for a while, Ember got to a corridor with doors on either side of it. It looked like no-one had been there for a very long time. Ember decided to check out the rooms and see what she could scavenge from them, seeing she didn't have anything better to do. The first 5 rooms didn't contain anything that was worth taking with her, but as she stepped into the 6th room, she grinned to herself.

"Jackpot." She said.

The room that Ember had stepped into seemed to be some form of medical bay. The smell in the room was weird, it was dusty mostly. The room itself looked like no-one had been there in at least 30 years, which was probably what had happened. Ember closed the door behind her in case any Roboidz or Shades decided to walk into the corridor. The last thing she wanted to do was attracting their attention.

After she had looked around Caleb's lair, after having been painfully reminded that her hands had been burnt slightly, the first thing she noticed was that he didn't have anything around that resembled that it could be used to treat wounds. This had angered Ember a little, how could Caleb just bring children into a world like this and no have anything around that resembled medical supplies? Surely he must've known that children are more prone to getting hurt than adults? So Ember started to look the cupboards in the medical bay and grabbed every single form of bandages she could find, dumping them on an examination table. As she looked through the medical cabinets, Ember didn't have any other choice but to start reading the labels of the bottles to find out what kind of medication the bottles contained, seeing as they all had strange futuristic names that she didn't know the meaning off.

"Why can't bottles just be labeled painkillers or burn ointment?" Ember asked out loud after finding out what the painkillers were. "Bloody futuristic names."

After finding everything that Ember thought would be useful, she found a large messenger bag which contained a medium sized first aid kit. She put everything she had found into the bag and lifted it over her shoulder as she moved over to the door. She pulled the door open and stepped outside after looking around to see if the coast was clear. Once she was sure, she closed the door behind her and started to make her way back to Caleb's lair.

The walk back went a little slower as Ember had to keep adjusting the strap of her bag as it was bloody heavy and she had to check her notes to see where she was so she wouldn't get lost. As Ember was looking down at her notes, when she rounded a corner, she didn't see the Shade until she had almost walked into it. The Shade had its back turned to her, but it started to turn around to face her.

Although every single fiber of her being told Ember to run as fast as she could, she knew that it wasn't the smartest thing to do because it would end up with her getting lost, which was something she really wanted to avoid at all costs. The thought of getting lost inside FutureGate with all the Roboidz and the Shades walking around was even scarier than fighting of a Shade. Instead Ember dropped the bag to the ground and grabbed a metal pipe that was lying close by.

"Bring it on, stinky." Ember said as the Shade reached out for her.

Ember swung the pipe as hard as she could and she hit the Shade on the side of the head. Its head snapped to the side but it didn't seem like it was affected by the blow at all, so Ember swung the pipe again. This time, she caught it in the side and knocked it off balance, it fell into the railing of the gantry which had been made up out of chains. The mask that the Shade was wearing had probably come loose when Ember had hit it in the head as it fell to the ground.

The Shade straightened up again and it turned to face Ember, making her scream in shock. Caleb had mentioned that the Shades were humans converted by the Roboidz, but he hadn't mentioned what they looked like underneath the mask. Now that Ember had seen it, she severely wished that she never had as she felt like throwing up. The person underneath the mask had been a man, although the person was hardly recognizable as a man now, seeing that his face had started, or rather was, decaying. Ember was now able recognize the smell that was hanging around the Shades, it was the smell of rotting flesh.

"Oh my god…" Ember gasped, feeling sick. "Oh my god… this… this is just too weird… this can't be real…"

As the Shade started to come at Ember again, she gripped the metal pipe in both hands and once it was close enough, she swung the pipe, putting all her weight behind the swing. The Shade was knocked off balance again and when it fell against the railing, the chains snapped. The Shade fell of the gantry and fell onto the ground a feet below. Ember dropped the pipe and grabbed the messenger bag of the ground before she started to run as fast as she could. She somehow managed to make it back to the lair without running into any more Shades.

Ember closed the door behind her and let out a breath in relief as she walked over to the table. She put the messenger bag on the table and started digging through it for the burn ointment. After putting some of it on her hand palms, she walked over to one of the tables which had various laptops on it to see which one was going to be the easiest to fix. She doubted that the internet was still going to be intact but it wouldn't' do all that much harm to check. Even if the internet didn't exist anymore, she could always try to hack into the FutureGate mainframe.

By the time that Ember had almost finished fixing the laptop; Caleb came back into the lair.

"Hey." Ember said absently, not really looking up from the laptop. "How was your talk with Cybele?"

"Fine." Caleb said absently as he stared at the messenger bag. "What's that?"

"Oh, I got bored so I went out to explore a little." Ember replied. "I found a medical room so I thought that I'd grab some stuff. I mean, you don't have any medical stuff around, so…"

"You went out?" Caleb repeated.

"Yeah." Ember nodded.

"On your own?" Caleb asked.

"Well you weren't here, so yeah." Ember nodded.

"What if you'd gotten lost?" Caleb exclaimed making Ember jump a little. "Or ran into a Roboid! Or a Shade!"

"Actually I did run into a Shade." Ember remarked.

Ember couldn't help but shudder at the thought of what was being the mask of a Shade and quickly tried to shake the image from her mind.

"Everything worked out in the end through." She added, shrugging. "I kicked some Shade butt."

She looked up at Caleb to find that he was looking somewhere between surprised, proud and angry, but she couldn't make out which emotion was winning, so she decided to make amends before Caleb got angry.

"I'm sorry I went out." Ember apologized. "I won't do it again, I swear. If it helps, I found a lot of medical supplies."

"Thanks." Caleb replied. "Just promise you won't go out alone again."

"I promise." Ember nodded. "So what did you talk about with Cybele? You took a long time to come back."

"I told her about you." Caleb replied as Ember fitted the casing back onto the laptop. "She said to go ahead with the final mission."

"But that's a good thing isn't it?" Ember asked. "You're not looking very glad about it."

"No, I am glad you're here." Caleb replied, giving Ember a small smile. "But the other recruits were trained."

"They were also children." Ember remarked which got her a surprised look from Caleb. "I'm sorry; I can't keep quiet about this anymore. You let children fight your battles for you."

"So?" he asked, the look on his face telling Ember that he didn't see what the big deal was.

"So?" Ember repeated. "That's all you're going to say? So? You let children fight Roboidz! Do you have any idea what could've happened? They could've gotten hurt! They could've died! And all you've got to say for yourself is so? I'm sorry, but don't you think you should've thought your plan through a little more before letting children come here and play with killing machines?"

It didn't take a genius to see that Ember had caught Caleb of guard with her opinion. He was just standing there, unsure of what to do or what to say in response to this.

"They wanted to come here themselves." Caleb said, still looking lost for words.

"I know. Believe me, I know, Hannah told me everything. But you should've done something about that." Ember said. "You're an adult for crying out loud. They're just kids! They can't make proper decisions for themselves yet. They don't have the experience that you or I have. I know that you've done a great job in keeping them safe, but what if one of them gotten hurt? You didn't even have proper medical supplies around here until now. Didn't you ever stop to think you'd need those with a load of kids around?"

"Never had the time." Caleb replied, looking like he was about to get angry again. "You don't know what it's like out there. Those children wanted to be here, who was I to tell them no? They were the only ones that believed me! The adults didn't!"

"Hey, I believed you!" Ember stated, feeling offended. "Don't I count? Last time I checked I'm an adult too!"

"You're just one person." Caleb replied. "You can't win a war with just two people."

"Well, right now I'm all you've got." Ember pointed out. "I might not be a trained recruit but I can improvise well enough. Look, I'm sorry at having a go at you, really I am. I just find it a little hard to believe that you didn't think about what could've happened if something went wrong."

"Told you, didn't have time." Caleb replied, a small smirk appearing on his face. "Being the leader of the resistance isn't all fun and games you know. There's food scavenging, training the recruits, making sure the recruits didn't attract any Roboidz or Shades. The list goes on and on."

"Suppose you're right." Ember shrugged. "Children can be really, really noisy. So, we're cool, yeah?"

"It's not cold in here." Caleb stated, frowning at Ember.

"No." Ember laughed. "I meant like, the hatchet is buried. You know, forget the argument happened and move on?"

"Oh yeah, yeah, we're cool." Caleb replied as a boyish grin spread out over his face.

Ember returned the smile just before she turned the laptop on. She watched it starting up for a few moments before it died in a cloud of black smoke and a shower of sparks.

"Oh come on!" Ember complained, hitting the side of the screen. "You stupid rust bucket!"

"You tried to repair that?" Caleb asked, walking over to her. "Don't bother, tried it multiple times myself, none of the computers here will work."

"Great…" Ember sighed as she rubbed her face. "So, what's this final mission you keep talking about?"

"Neuros." Caleb replied, getting a grim look on his face. "Don't know what it is, but I think it's the power behind the Roboidz. I do know it's in N-Lab."

"And judging from the look on your face, you've got no clue on where N-Lab is." Ember remarked.

"Something like that." Caleb nodded. "But I'm working on it."

"I'm sure you are." Ember nodded. "Maybe if we can get one of the computers working we can get into the mainframe and find out N-Lab's location."

"I told you, I can't get them to work!" Caleb said, throwing his hands up in frustration.

"Yeah..." Ember said slowly. "No offence or anything, but smashing them to bits won't make them work."

She watched as Caleb glanced around the tables for a moment where various bits and pieces of computers were lying. Clearly all of them had been smashed to bits over time and seeing that Caleb was the only human on FutureGate, she had a feeling he'd done that out of frustration. When Caleb turned to face Ember again, she couldn't help but smile as he looked a tiny bit embarrassed.

"I'd be more than happy to try and build a working computer." Ember offered.

"Really?" Caleb asked, his eyes lighting up.

"Yeah, sure." Ember nodded.

She smiled back when Caleb started to grin widely before he grabbed her into an excited hug.

"Brilliant!" he exclaimed.

"You're welcome." Ember laughed as Caleb let go of her.

**That's it for Chapter 5.  
Chapter 6 should be up either on Monday or Tuesday, depends on whether school allows me some free time:)  
By the way, the way that the Shade was described isn't official as far as I know, that was all my mind thinking that up.  
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think:)  
~ Abby**


	6. Chapter 6

**Hello!  
Thanks to everyone who took time to review! Hope you're still liking the story!:D  
Anyways, here's chapter 6, enjoy:P**

Chapter 6: Repair Work.

Before Ember got to work in trying to build a working computer, Caleb took her up to the command post to see whether she could repair the computer that was there or now. After opening the computer up, they discovered that the computer had been completely fried, so seeing it wasn't an option anymore, the two of them went back to Caleb's lair. While Ember worked on building a workable computer, Caleb went through all kinds of blue prints in an attempt to find the location of N-Lab.

While Ember worked, her mind started to wander. Judging from Caleb's behaviour, she doubted that Caleb knew about who his mother was. Someone who knew that their parents had created the Roboidz wouldn't bounce around like he was doing unless he was doing a really good job at hiding what he knew about his parents, which Ember doubted. She wasn't about to tell him though, if he really didn't know, she figured that it would be best to wait until this Neuros thing was defeated. She didn't know a lot about Caleb, but he didn't strike her as the type of person who would be able to make rational decisions when something shocking had been revealed about his past.

The silence that the two of them were working in was comfortable, but seeing as Ember knew next to nothing about Caleb himself, she decided to break it.

"So how long have you been here?" Ember asked.

"It's been 5 years since I woke up." Caleb replied.

"Since you woke up?" Ember asked, pretending to be completely ignorant about it. "Woke up from what?"

"I was cryogenically frozen." Caleb replied. "It's like this suspended animation, keeps the body alive but you won't age."

"Oh, right." Ember nodded. "So you've been on your own all that time? No company at all?"

"No." Caleb shook his head. "Well, there is Cybele, but she's not like a flesh and blood person."

"Yeah, nothing can beat a bit human company." Ember nodded. "You know, if I'm honest I can't understand how you survived all that time on your own. If it were me, I would've gone mental by now."

"Cybele kept me sane." Caleb replied.

Ember nodded. She couldn't help but admire Caleb for the fact that he managed to keep going for 5 years on his own. She certainly wouldn't have been able to do that, not even if she had one person to fall back on.

The second that Ember heard something sparking, she pulled her hands away from the parts she was working on, thinking that that was the cause of the sparking. Although after looking at the parts for a moment, she realized that it was the computer that was sparking, but something else. It didn't take that long for Ember to realize what the source of it was, although she was a little surprised to find that it turned out to be Caleb's arm. She knew from completing the Cycon Archive that he had a cybernetic arm, but she had kind of forgotten when she met him.

"You alright?" Ember asked, getting to her feet and walking over to Caleb.

"Yeah, fine." Caleb replied. "Just my arm acting up again. Won't take a mo to fix."

Ember frowned a little when Caleb practically fled away from her to grab some tools. She watched from a distance as Caleb started to work on his cybernetic arm, but by the looks of things, he wasn't really being successful in making the sparking stop. Ember walked over to him and without thinking about it, she took the screwdriver from Caleb's hand. This made him jump in surprise as Ember sat down on top of the table he was sitting at.

"It's okay." Ember smiled. "I know what I'm doing."

As Ember reached for Caleb's jacket sleeve to push it out of the way, so she could have better access to his arm, Caleb pulled his arm away.

"What's wrong?" Ember asked, seeing the shocked look on his face.

"It's okay, I can manage." Caleb replied.

"You know, you don't have to be embarrassed about your arm." Ember remarked, having a feeling that was what was going on.

"Why not?" Caleb asked. "I don't even know where my implants came from. For all I know, I could be a Roboid experiment."

"I don't think so." Ember shook her head. "I mean, you woke up with them from that cryo thingy, right? Who knows when you got them? Maybe it happened before the Roboidz took control, hell, you could've gotten then before you were frozen."

"But what am I?" Caleb asked. "Man or machine? I'm a freak."

"Shut up." Ember yelled.

If there was one thing that she couldn't stand, than it was people she liked talking themselves down. Ember took a deep breath to calm herself when she saw Caleb's shocked look.

"Look, you're not a freak, alright?" Ember said, fighting to remain calm. "So what if you've got a few implants? They don't determine the person you are inside. I mean, I doubt that you would be fighting against the Roboidz if you were something that they created."

"You can't know that for sure." Caleb stated.

"You're right, I can't." Ember lied. "But I do know that I won't think any less of you when and if I see your arm. I don't judge people on the bases of looks, Caleb."

"Really?" Caleb asked not looking entirely convinced.

"Yeah, really." Ember replied. "You know, if anything your head implant makes you look even more handsome."

Ember couldn't help but smile as Caleb started to grin. Clearly that little remark had calmed Caleb down a little, although he still looked insecure about himself.

"Well thank you." Caleb grinned reaching up to briefly touch his skull implant before he started to look insecure again. "You really wouldn't look at me differently when you see my arm?"

"Nope." Ember replied confidently. "And if I do, you can personally toss me head first of FutureGate."

Ember waited patiently as Caleb seemed to have a mental debate with himself. Eventually he seemed to nod to himself before retaking his seat. Ember carefully rolled up the sleeve of Caleb's leather jacket and hoodie before starting to look what the problem was.

"Do you have a mother?" Caleb asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah, I do." Ember replied, nodding slightly.

"What's she like?" Caleb asked.

Ember glanced up at him for a moment to find that there was genuine curiosity in his eyes, which made her smile.

"She's..." Ember sighed looking back down at his arm. "She's wonderful. Kind, caring... just like a mother should be. My father, her husband died when I was 15. He drank himself to death after my little brother died. She loved my dad very much, we all did. we were all heartbroken after he died. But my mum raised us from that point on, on her own, so she's the most awesome person on Earth that I know, at least in 2010, she could've just left my brother and I to care for ourselves, but she didn't."

Ember cleared her throat and blinked the tears from her eyes.

"I can see the problem." She said quickly before Caleb could ask any other questions as she cleared her throat from the sob that was building in it. "Looks like some of the wiring is completely fried. Do you have any feeling in your fingers at all?"

"None." Caleb shook his head.

"Thought so." Ember nodded. "You got spare wire somewhere?"

Ember got to her feet and walked over to a box from which some thick wires were sticking out of. She kneeled down beside the box and started to dig through it.

"I'm sorry." Caleb said.

"For what?" Ember asked holding up some wire to check if it could be used for Caleb's arm.

"Making you upset." Caleb stated as Ember saw that the wire could be used.

"I'm fine, really." Ember replied, getting to her feet and walking back to the table. "Besides, you didn't know that stuff like that happened to me. Anyway, just tell me when you've got feeling in your fingers again, alright?"

"Yeah." Caleb nodded. "How do you know to do all this?"

"Everything I know about computers I've learnt from my brother." Ember replied as she worked on replacing the wires. "And no offence, I figured that your arm is the same as replacing the wires in a computer."

"My arm is far more complex than a computer." Caleb stated, looking offended.

"I know, but as you can see, I'm doing a pretty good job of it." Ember remarked looking up at him before winking which made Caleb smirk a little. "Besides, this is a two hand job, seeing as you've only got one hand to work with, you would've had to rely on me fixing your arm anyway."

Ember laughed a little as Caleb thought about this before he started to shake his head at himself.

"There." Ember said about a half an hour later after fastening the last wire. "That should do it. How does it feel?"

"Better thanks." Caleb replied, bending his fingers.

"You're welcome." Ember nodded, putting the tools she had been using aside. "Hopefully, it shouldn't give you any more problems for the time being. By the way, I told you so."

"Told me so what?" Caleb asked.

"Told you I wouldn't look at you differently." Ember stated.

Ember smiled as she watched the realization passed over Caleb's face and the next thing she knew, he had grabbed her into a rib cracking hug that made her laugh.

"I'd like to breath!" Ember laughed before Caleb let go of her.

"Thank you." Caleb said, looking utterly sincere about it.

"You're welcome." Ember smiled.

Both of them went back to their jobs and Ember sighed as she picked up the pieces she'd dropped when Caleb's arm had started short circuiting.

What felt like three hours later, Ember didn't know for sure as she wasn't wearing a watch and there wasn't a clock around, she tightened the last screw and she cracked her back which had gone stiff a long time ago from sitting in the same position for too long. Seeing as Caleb had gone out some time before to scavenge some food, although Ember didn't have a clue what he would be able to scavenge as she doubted there would be anything left in FutureGate that was still edible. Ember turned on the computer and watched as it started up. She grinned to herself when the computer didn't end up short circuiting or didn't show any other signs of not working properly.

"Oh yeah, who's the man!" Ember exclaimed, punching the air before shaking her head at herself for the stupid responce. "Right... note to self, don't ever say that again, never ever!"

Before Ember even dared to log onto the FutureGate mainframe, she set up as much firewalls and protection programs as she knew of in case Neuros was on the lookout for anyone other than Roboidz or Shades trying to log onto the mainframe.

"Alright, let's see what we've got..." Ember muttered as the computer set up the connection.

Just when Ember was about to start looking around in the mainframe, the door opened and Ember stepped into the room, carrying the bag he'd grabbed before leaving to go scavenging.

"Dinner is served." Caleb grinned as he put the bag down on one of the tables. "So, what would you like? Vacuum packed beans on toast or vacuum packed toast on beans."

"That sounds really lovely." Ember smiled as Caleb held up the two packets. "Though, if you don't mind, I'd like to wait with dinner."

"Why?" Caleb asked, looking surprised.

"I managed to get the computer working." Ember replied.

"You did?" Caleb exclaimed, dropping the two packets on the table before rushing over to Ember to look over her shoulder. "That's brilliant! All the answers we want are right at our finger tips!"

"Let's have a look." Ember said.

The two of them spend the next hour trying to find out where N-Lab was. With every second that they got closer to finding out the location, Caleb got more and more excited. To Ember, his excitement was infectious and she was having a hard time trying to keep focused on the task at hand.

"Jackpot!" Ember exclaimed, punching the air.

"What?" Caleb yelled in excitement.

"N-Lab's got CCTV." Ember grinned.

"What?" Caleb repeated, although now the excitement had been replaced by confusion.

"CCTV." Ember repeated. "It's a… oh never mind what it is, what's important is that we can have a look about inside N-Lab without actually having to go there! There's security cameras mounted in there!"

"That's brilliant!" Caleb grinned widely.

Ember grimaced a tiny bit when Caleb clapped her on the shoulder. He probably hadn't realized that he'd don't that with his cybernetic arm in his excitement but Ember wasn't about to say anything about it, not wanting to cause another awkward moment over Caleb's cybernetics.

Instead she called up the images up on the screen and what they found was nothing in particular, just the camera being pointed at a Roboid.

"That's not very useful, is it?" Caleb remarked, sounding a little put out.

"Let me just see if I can get control of the camera..." Ember muttered, more to herself than Caleb.

A few moments later, Ember had been able to get control of the camera and the two of them were currently looking at what looked like a large spider's web made up of green lasers that surrounded a metal tube that was red on the inside.

"What is that?" Ember asked as she and Caleb leaned closer to get a better look.

"I don't know. It's not a Bio-Rod at any rate." Caleb replied. "Can you get this thing to get a closer look?"

"Yeah, sure." Ember nodded, typing in a few commands.

The image zoomed in on the metal tube only to find that there was a brain inside of it.

"That's a brain in a tube." Ember stated, gaping at the screen.

"That has to be Neuros!" Caleb said.

"That's a brain in a tube!" Ember repeated. "that's disgusting! Who would want to have their brain stuffed inside a lava lamp! Do you have any idea...?"

Ember stopped when she noticed that Caleb was staring at her with a look on his face that clearly said that he thought she was going mental.

"Uh... yeah..." Ember said, feeling herself flushing red. "Right... so that web doesn't look like it's going to be a lot of fun."

"Yeah, it must be a security grid of some sort." Caleb agreed, looking back at the screen.

"Let me just grab a few screenshots of it." Ember said, typing in the right commands. "Don't know about you, but I don't want to spend too much time on the mainframe. For all we know Neuros could be tracing the signal of this computer."

"Good thinking, recruit." Caleb nodded.

"You know Caleb; calling me by my name would sound a little nicer than being called 'recruit'." Ember remarked.

"Alright, Ember." Caleb smirked.

Ember gave him a quick smile back before focusing on finding a blue print of where N-Lab was. Just as Ember was about to log off the computer, the computer started to freak out completely. It called up screens that Ember didn't even ask for.

"You've got be kidding me." Ember said as the screen started to look distorted. "This shouldn't be happening!"

"What?" Caleb asked. "What's that thing doing?"

"The computer is being hacked." Ember replied, starting to type as fast as she could. "I don't believe this! I thought I had the computer protected! no, come on! stupid amchine! you shouldn't be..."

Ember looked up when the computer screen went completely black and stopped working only to find that Caleb was holding the power cord.

"That works too." Ember said to which Caleb grinned.

"When in doubt, pull the plug." He said to which Ember laughed.

"Mind putting that back in?" she asked as she yanked the wire that connected the computer to the mainframe out of the computer.

Caleb plugged the power cord back in and Ember started the computer back up again. The two of them spend the remainder of the evening pouring over the screenshots that Ember had taken of N-Lab, trying to figure out a battle plan. In the end, they decided that the best thing to do was to go down to N-Lab and have a look around themselves in the morning.

**So that's it for chapter 6.  
Chapter 7 should be up in the weekend, Sunday afternoon at the latest.  
Thanks you for reading and let me know what you think:)  
~ Abby**


	7. Chapter 7

**Hiya!  
A huge thank you to everyone who has read and/or reviewed! *hugs you all*  
I should mention that I don't have a Beta reader so I apologize for any spelling mistakes you might come across, but feel free to let me know so I can correct them.:)  
Here's chapter 7, enjoy!:D**

Chapter 7: Nightmares

When the two of them started to get tired, Caleb showed Ember to where he had set up the bed spaces. The beds themselves weren't much, basically one bed was just a thin mattress on the ground with a scruffy blanket, but Ember wasn't going to start complaining about that. She felt exhausted after the day's events, the running from the Roboidz and the Shades, the amount of information her brain was trying to process was just getting a little too much to handle.

"I'm going to set up the defences." Caleb said. "Won't be a minute."

Ember just nodded before he left. She picked out one of the beds and sat down on the thin mattress. She took of the boots and khaki vest, putting them aside at the foot of the bed. After that, she unzipped the jumpsuit and tied the sleeves around her waist so she was going to be a little more comfortable as she felt that the jumpsuit was restricting her movements just a tiny bit. She decided to leave the long sleeved shirt on, seeing as it wasn't all that warm in the sleeping quarters. She grabbed another blanket and folded it so it could function as a pillow before lying down and pulling the blanket up over her shoulders. The blanket smelled a little mouldy, but Ember tried to ignore that as much as she could.

Ember glanced up when Caleb came walking back into the room and walked over to his own bed close to the door. She watched as Caleb took of his boots, thigh pack, his half fingered glove and leather jacket before lying down.

"Goodnight, Ember." Caleb said, glancing over at her.

"Night, Caleb." Ember replied before turning her back on him with the intention of getting some sleep.

Now that Ember was lying down, she found that sleep was eluding her, which she found really annoying. She always had this problem, no matter how tired she was, she couldn't fall asleep straight away if she was lying in something else than her own bed. Not that everything was quiet, she could hear sounds coming from deep within FutureGate and she wasn't afraid to admit that it scared her a little. Since it was so quiet, she could also hear the moment that Caleb fell asleep as his breathing deepened a little.

After spending some time tossing and turning, Ember got out of the bed and walked over to the single round window that was in the room. She pulled over a crate to it so she could sit down and look out of it. It wasn't a clear night, so Ember couldn't see the starts, so instead she tried to entertain herself by trying to see figures in the clouds.

Ember was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that she was actually on FutureGate in the year 2110. She pinched herself to make sure that all of it wasn't a dream and when she found that she wasn't waking up in her own safe bedroom, she felt a shudder running down her spine. During the evening she'd found out that the weird brain in the tube was actually Neuros and Caleb had already warned her that she was the one who was going to have to navigate through the web of lasers as Caleb's cybernetics would probably alert the Roboidz, not to mention Neuros. It was something that she wasn't looking forward too at all; in fact, the thought of having to navigate her way through a web of lasers that was most certainly harmful to humans was completely terrifying. But seeing as Ember had signed up to help Caleb, she told herself that she was going to see it through to the end. She had too; it was after all what she had signed up for.

Ember pulled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs as she looked out of the window. All the thinking she was doing was giving her a major headache, but there was so much stuff to think about that she couldn't put it aside to think about in the morning.

"Why can't you just stop thinking? Stupid brain." Ember whispered quietly, leaning her chin on her knees.

After staring out of the window for a few more minutes, Ember went back to her bed and was just about to get comfortable when she heard Caleb whimpering in his sleep. She sat up and looked over to Caleb to find that he was tossing and turning. For a moment Ember wondered what to do before she got to her feet and walked over to Caleb's bed. She kneeled down beside him and in the dim light she could see that he was grimacing in his sleep, not to mention that he was sweating. It was clear to see he was having a nightmare and for a moment Ember had no idea what she was supposed to do before she remembered what she used to do when her little brother Danny had a nightmare. Ember carefully put her hand on Caleb's forehead and started to stroke it with her thumb as she took hold of Caleb's human hand with her other one.

"It's alright." Ember said softly. "You're safe Caleb, it's just a dream. It's all just a dream. None of it is real, you're completely safe."

Ember kept talking even if it was just to let Caleb know that he wasn't alone. As soon as Ember had taken hold of Caleb's human hand, it tightened around hers in a vice like grip. After 10 minutes of sitting beside him, and trying to calm Caleb down while he slept, his grip relaxed and the grimacing stopped.

"There we are..." Ember whispered, sitting back as Caleb settled into a dreamless sleep.

She slipped her hand out of Caleb's and quietly went back to her own bed. Ember lay down and glanced over at Caleb to find that he was still sleeping peacefully which made her smile slightly to herself. The moment that she rolled onto her side with the back facing the wall next to her, she managed to fall asleep.

Ember woke up the following morning when a light shone in her face and when she opened her eyes, she immediately closed them again against the bright sunlight.

"Bugger..." Ember complained, throwing an arm over her eyes against the light. "Where's a bloody curtain when you need one?"

After a few moments Ember sat up and ran a hand through her hair as she opened her eyes. She sighed when she saw that she was still inside FutureGate and that everything was real. She glanced over to Caleb's bed to find that he was already out of bed. Ember climbed to her feet and put on her boots without bothering to lace them up properly. As she walked out of the sleeping quarters, she found that Caleb was already looking over the blue prints that he'd been looking over the night before.

"You're up early." Ember remarked as she walked over to him.

She watched as Caleb jumped a little before turning to face her, which was when he started to grin.

"Good morning." He grinned. "Want some breakfast?

"If you've got some." Ember nodded.

She watched as Caleb walked over to the bag he'd taken to go exploring the night before. When he pulled out a full English breakfast, which was also vacuum packed, Ember felt her stomach flipping. The night before both of them had forgotten to eat in their excitement at finding out what Neuros was and where N-Lab was and the idea of eating a full, greasy English breakfast wasn't appealing to her empty stomach at all.

"Uh... I'd rather eat the beans on toast if you don't mind." Ember remarked.

Caleb shrugged after frowning for a moment and tossed her the packet with the beans and toast. For a moment Ember wondered how she was going to heat the beans, but in the end she settled for only eating the toast.

"What are you doing?" Ember asked, sitting beside Caleb on the table as he kept going through the blueprints.

"Plotting our route." Caleb replied without looking up.

"Right." Ember said. "I suppose a SatNav would be useful right now, we could just type in Neuros and let that thing lead us there."

"What's a SatNav?" Caleb asked, looking confused.

"Satellite navigation." Ember replied. "It's like this device that tells you where you want to go when you type in the destination. Although I doubt think it would work here... the Roboidz probably shot down all satellites to cut off communications so the humans couldn't call for help... anyway, what's the route?"

"Nothing special, just stealthily sneaking past a Shade plant." Caleb replied.

"Shades?" Ember asked. "Isn't there another route we could take?"

"Not unless you want to go through a cargo hold full of war droidz." Caleb shook his head.

"Well, if that's the case, I'll take the Shades over Roboidz any day of the week." Ember remarked.

"Brilliant." Caleb grinned.

Ember walked back into the sleeping quarters and put on the rest of her stuff and laced up her boots properly before walking out into the main room of the lair again.

"Ready to go, sir!" Ember grinned, giving a mock salute.

"Let's get going then, recruit." Caleb replied, acting like a strict leader for a few moments.

Ember laughed as Caleb started to smirk before the two of them left the lair. They moved through FutureGate as fast as they could without getting caught by patrolling Roboidz or Shades. Ember had been looking around as they walked through FutureGate. The section that they were in looked like it had been inhabited by Humans once upon a time. Ember had been so focussed on looking around that she hadn't noticed Caleb had stopped and she ended up walking into his back. Caleb glanced back at her and gave her a slightly annoyed look before looking back through the doorway they were standing at.

"What's wrong?" Ember asked.

"We're about to enter the Shade plant." Caleb explained. "Stay close and keep moving."

Ember nodded and took a deep breath to calm herself before Caleb moved into the plant. She barely had any time to look around to see what was going on as the two of them moved through the plant as swiftly and stealthily as they could.

Caleb had lead them over to the upper walkways of the Shade plant, for which Ember was grateful as that meant that there the Shades wouldn't be able to get to them. She was also glad for the fact that Caleb had decided to take that rout as that meant that Ember wouldn't be able to see how a Shade was made, which was the last thing she wanted seeing as she already knew what was behind a Shade's mask. She made sure to keep her eyes on Caleb's back at all times as they moved through the plant. The smell inside the plant was unbearable, the smell of one Shade was bad enough, but the smell of a whole plant full of Shades made Ember want to throw up. As soon as they left the plant, Ember let out the breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"That went smoothly." Caleb remarked.

"If you say so" Ember replied. "Personally I wouldn't want to go through here again if you don't mind."

"So you'd rather face the Roboidz." Caleb smirked.

"Hell no." Ember replied as Caleb kept smirking. "I'd rather take a route that doesn't involve Roboidz or Shades."

"Tough." Caleb smirked.

Ember shook her head at him as the two of them reached the door that would get them inside N-Lab. Ember felt that there was something wrong with the whole thing. The trip getting to N-Lab had been way to easy, and now that they were right outside the door, which wasn't guarded at all, made a shiver run down her spine.

"Caleb, I think we should go..." Ember whispered, grabbing Caleb's arm.

"Yeah, it's too quiet." Caleb agreed. "But we got to know what we're up against."

"I know, but we're no good to this war dead." Ember replied.

Caleb turned to look at her and Ember knew that arguing wasn't going to do any good after seeing the look of determination in Caleb's eyes.

"Alright, forget I said anything." Ember said. "Don't blame me if this turns out to be a trap."

"This isn't a trap." Caleb said confidently.

Ember raised an eyebrow at him, he sounded confident and his posture screamed confidence as well, but his eyes betrayed him. He wasn't feeling confident at all and if Ember didn't know any better, she would've said that Caleb was looking a little scared.

"Well, let's go do this then." Ember said. "The longer we stand here the longer Neuros has time to send the Roboidz to go after us."

"You're right." Caleb said. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be." Ember nodded.

Caleb opened the door and the two of them sneaked inside N-Lab. Ember felt the hairs on the back of her neck and arms standing on edge as they stepped inside. Caleb had selected a walkway over N-Lab as an entry point and they had a good view on what was going on. They heard a soft but evil voice ordering the Roboidz via what Ember suspected was a communications system. She knew instantly that that voice belonged to Neuros and she felt a shiver rolling down her spine again. Both Caleb and Ember moved along the gantry, keeping their footsteps as light as they possibly could so that they didn't make too much noise that would attract unwanted attention.

"The web is bigger than it looked on camera." Ember whispered as the two of them crouched down in the middle of the walkway.

"It's not going to be easy to get through that." Caleb remarked, looking down at the web of lasers.

"I'll manage." Ember replied with more confidence than she felt before pointing at the Roboidz that were standing around. "Look at that. They must be Neuros' guards."

There were wardroidz and guards standing all around the room. all of the wardroidz had weapons on their arms while the gaurds didn't have anything at all, but Ember suspected that the gaurds had enough strength to crush a human in the blink of an eye.

"We'd have to find a way to take them out." Caleb whispered.

"Not to mention find a way to take out the cameras." Ember whispered back. "Although that could be fixed by a simple feed loop."

"A what?" Caleb asked.

"I'll explain later." Ember replied. "Can we get out of here now?"

"Yeah, come on." Caleb nodded. "Stay close."

"No need to remind me of that." Ember remarked.

Caleb got to his feet and grabbed Ember's hand before the two of them started moving back to the door that they had used to get into N-Lab with. Ember glanced down at the Roboidz to find that a few of them were looking up at the walkway they were standing on before raising their guns.

"Caleb!" Ember yelled.

The next few seconds almost seemed to happen too fast for Ember to process, but the second that she had yelled, Caleb turned to see what was going on before he saw the Roboidz.

"Run!" he ordered, pushing Ember ahead of him.

They ran towards the door as fast as they could. Just as Ember was about to reach the door, she was pulled down to the floor of the walkway by Caleb. Knowing what was probably about to happen, she covered her head and a second later, the shots made impact on the walkway. The walkway shook and Ember felt her heart sinking when she heard the metal starting to ground, as if it wasn't able to take the weight anymore.

"Come on!" Caleb yelled.

The next thing Ember knew, she was being pulled to her feet before they started running again. Seeing as they had left the door open when they'd come in, Caleb and Ember were able to dive through it before the walkway gave out underneath them. Both of them were gasping for breath as they jumped to their feet just in time to see the walkway falling before it hit the ground with an ear deafening crash.

"Come on, back to the lair." Caleb said, grabbing Ember's hand again.

They ran back the way they came, but at some point they must've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Instead of ending up on the walkway they had used the first time they passed through the Shade plant, they ended up on the ground floor. There weren't any Roboidz around, for which Ember was glad, but there were Shades there, a lot of Shades. They only realized this as they were standing in the middle of the plant and the exit was blocked by Shades.

"This way!" Ember yelled, pulling Caleb along to go back the way they came.

Before they could reach the door they'd just came through, Shades stepped out in front of it, trapping them in the middle of the plant with a lot of smelly Shades surrounding them.

"Don't let them touch you." Caleb warned, pulling Ember out of reach from an approaching Shade. "They're highly toxic."

"Great, just what we need." Ember remarked sarcastically.

She looked around when Caleb leaned down to grab something only for it to be two metal bars.

"Don't knock of their masks." Ember warned as Caleb handed her one of the bars before they turned to stand back to back. "You don't want to see that, trust me."

"I believe you." Caleb replied.

Caleb and Ember were standing in the middle of the plant, waiting for the Shades to come close enough for them to attack while they were looking around to find an exit. As Ember watched the Shades on her side coming closer and closer, she wondered if Caleb had a plan to escape, because she couldn't figure out an escape route. If he didn't have a plan, they were going to be in a lot of trouble.

**So, that's it for chapter 7, really hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!  
Just thought to let everyone know that there's not a Mission 2110 forum online here, set up by the lovely and awesomely awesome Oddments and Tweaks. Just head to the main page is where everyone's Mission 2110 stories are posted and click on Discussion Forums.  
Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think:)  
~ Abby**


	8. Chapter 8

**Hiya!**

**So here's Chapter 8. I mean to get this up a lot sooner, but real life got in the way *pushes school into a Shade pit* **

**Anyway, thanks to everyone who's read and/or reviewed:)**

Chapter 8: Battle plans.

"Caleb, please tell me you've got a plan." Ember said, not taking her eyes of the Shades that were slowly coming closer.

"Not yet." Caleb replied.

"That's a really comforting thought." Ember said sarcastically.

There simply wasn't time to say anything else as the Shades had come close enough to start reaching out to touch them. There wasn't a lot of room to work with either to swing the metal bar, but both Caleb and Ember made the most of it to keep the Shades away from them.

"I found a way out." Caleb exclaimed.

Ember looked up for a moment to find that he was looking at a set of chains that were part of the machines in the room. They came up from the floor and moved upwards as the cogs near the top of the machine turned. Close to the machine was the walkway that Caleb and Ember had used to be able to get through the plant without having to go over the ground floor. Without even talking about it, the two of them started making their way over to the chains, knocking Shades out of the way as they went.

"Grab the chain!" Caleb ordered once they had reached the chains.

Ember tossed her metal bar over to him to use before grabbing hold of the chain. The moment she had grabbed hold of it, she was being pulled upwards and once her feet left the ground, she wrapped her legs around the chain, holding on as tightly as she could. She looked down to find Shades off on his own, but it was a losing battle.

"Get out of there, Caleb!" Ember yelled. "They're getting to close!"

She watched as Caleb tossed the two bars against a few of the Shades, which stumbled back before Caleb turned and grabbed the chain. As Ember got close to the walkway, she reached out to grab hold of it, if she didn't; her hands were going to be crushed by the cogs. As soon as Ember had a good hold of the walkway with both hands, she let go of the chain with her legs before starting to pull herself up. Just as she was able to pull herself up on the walkway, she heard Caleb cry out in what sounded like pain. The second she turned to watched, she saw him kicking away a Shade. The Shade stumbled back against a few of the others and they all fell like a set of dominos. Ember could see that Caleb was grimacing in pain as soon as he got close enough to the walkway and she reached out when he grabbed hold of the walkway. She grabbed hold of his cybernetic arm, seeing that he was favouring his human one. But as soon as she grabbed hold of the cybernetic arm, Caleb stared at her in both surprise and slight fear.

"Now's not the time for a moral dilemma." Ember stated as she started to help Caleb pull himself up on the walkway. "Come on!"

"I'm not having a moral dilemma." Caleb stated as he started to climb up. "Whatever that is."

"Yeah right." Ember said sarcastically.

As soon as Caleb was safely up on the walkway, she looked down at the Shades to find them staring up at them.

"Are you okay?" Ember asked, turning to face Caleb again only to see that he was cradling his human arm.

"Yeah, we got to get back to the lair." Caleb said, trying to hide a grimace of pain.

Ember wasn't convinced that Caleb was fine, but she agreed with him, they had to get to safety first. She helped Caleb to his feet and the two of them made the trek back to the lair.

Once Ember stepped into the lair after Caleb, she closed the door behind her and turned the wheel to lock it before turning to Caleb who was starting to pull of his leather jacket.

"What happened?" Ember asked, walking over to him. "Did a Shade touch you?"

"Yes." Caleb grimaced.

Without saying another word or waiting for permission, Ember helped Caleb get his jacket off before carefully rolling up the sleeve of his hoodie up to his elbow after he had taken his glove off. She noticed that the spot the Shade had touched had burnt straight through the leather of Caleb's jacket and the fabric of his hoodie. When the wound had finally been revealed, Ember grimaced in sympathy. The spot the Shade had managed to touch was burnt badly, the skin was starting to blister and it reminded Ember a little of the burn she'd once gotten from getting hot cooking oil on her fingers.

"That looks really painful..." Ember said sympathetically.

"It's not that bad." Caleb shook his head.

Ember raised an eyebrow at Caleb in disbelief before pushing his other hand away from the blisters.

"Don't touch it." she ordered as she pushed Caleb back into a chair. "Trust me, it'll only hurt more. Just stay there, alright?"

With that, she walked into the bathroom/storage room and grabbed the bowl of water, which Caleb had assured her was clean as it went through a filtering system he had crafted himself. Ember decided to take his word for it and grabbed a relatively clean small towel which she dumped into the bowl. When she walked back into the main room of the lair and found that Caleb was examining the burn.

"I've never had something like this before." Caleb remarked.

"That's probably because you've never been touched by a Shade before." Ember remarked, putting the bowl down on the table that Caleb was sitting at.

She pushed herself up on the table and put her foot against another chair to keep her balance before grabbing the towel out of the bowl and wringing it out.

"This is going to hurt a little bit." Ember warned as she loosely wrapped the towel around the burn.

She bit her lip when Caleb tried to hide a grimace.

"Sorry." Ember apologized.

"It's alright." Caleb shook his head.

Ember figured that the best thing to do was to drain the blisters so they would heal faster, which was probably for the best, seeing as they were planning to end the Roboidz. She glanced around for a moment, wondering what she could use before her eyes fell on an old Bunsen burner.

"Keep that there." Ember said before getting to her feet again.

She walked over to the Bunsen burner and after finding a way to light it, she went digging through the first aid kit for something that resembled a needle. In the end she figured she'd just have to improvise with the small tweezers that was in the first aid kit.

"What are you doing?" Caleb asked.

"I'm going to drain the blisters." Ember replied. "They're going to burst sooner or later, so better to get rid of the fluids now before it bursts on its own. Besides, if I drain it now, it'll heal a lot faster."

"That sounds painful." Caleb remarked.

"Trust me; it won't be in the long run." Ember replied as she held the tweezers in the fire of the Bunsen burner which got her an odd look from Caleb. "This is to make sure that there aren't any germs on it by the way. The last thing you want is get an infection."

When Ember was done, she turned off the Bunsen burner and walked over to Caleb again after grabbing some bandages and gauze pads. She reached into her pocket and handed Caleb a packet of painkillers.

"One of these should ease the pain." Ember instructed, passing him a bottle of water she'd grabbed as well.

"Are you sure?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Ember nodded.

She watched as Caleb popped one of the tablets from the packet before swallowing it with a gulp of water after which he pulled a disgusted face.

"I never want to have one of those again." He complained. "They taste rubbish! I'd rather have a banana."

"Well, bananas are a good source for potassium." Ember smiled. "But I doubt that that will do much for getting rid of pain."

"Potassi-what?" Caleb asked.

"Never mind." Ember shook her head as she removed the towel from around his arm. "Now keep still, okay?"

"Are you really going to poke me with that?" Caleb asked, giving the tweezers a suspicious glance.

"Why don't you close your eyes?" Ember suggested. "It helps if you don't have to watch."

Caleb gave Ember a sceptical look for a few moments and she could see that he was wondering whether to take her seriously or not, but after a few moments, he closed his eyes.

"Why don't you tell me about something you like?" Ember suggested, figuring it was best to use a distraction technique. "A happy memory maybe? Or a favourite spot you've got somewhere?"

"Well, I like being out on the deck." Caleb replied.

"Why?" Ember asked.

"Because of the fresh air." Caleb replied. "The open space. Here it's all so cramped and the air's been recycled a 100 million times."

"I'll give you that." Ember remarked.

While Ember kept Caleb talking, she punctured the blisters and let the fluids drain out of it. It was clear to see that Caleb wasn't noticing any of it, seeing he was sitting with a slightly blissful smile on his face as he talked about being outside.

"There, all done." Ember remarked, putting the tweezers aside.

Caleb opened his eyes and turned his arm slightly to get a better look at where the blisters were while Ember cleaned the fluids from the blisters of his arm with the damp towel.

"I didn't even feel any of it." Caleb said in surprise.

"That was the whole point of you telling me what you liked best." Ember winked as she grabbed a tube of ointment that would soothe the pain a little. "You know, I was meaning to ask... I saw you had a nightmare last night, do you want to talk about it?"

"I sometimes dream about being trapped in a box I can't get out off." Caleb replied. "Cybele says it's the moment I woke up from being cryo frozen."

"I can understand that." Ember nodded as she carefully put the ointment over the burns.

"That hurts!" Caleb complained.

"Baby." Ember smiled good naturedly as she grabbed the packets with the gauze pad and bandages. "But I can't really imagine what it must've been like to wake up in a box all alone. But I can imagine that it must've been pretty scary."

"Is there anything you're afraid of?" Caleb asked.

"Plenty of things." Ember smiled as she started putting the bandage in place. "Of course I'm kind of scared of the Roboidz and Shades, but what I'm really afraid of are spiders."

"Spiders?" Caleb smirked.

"It's not that funny." Ember rolled her eyes before smiling. "But yeah, I'm really genuinely afraid of spiders. Don't know how it happened though, it must've happened when I was a toddler or something. I've been afraid of them for as long as I can remember."

"You're lucky there aren't any spiders here on FutureGate then." Caleb remarked, glancing around the lair.

"Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean that they're not there." Ember remarked as she tied off the bandage. "There, done. D'you need me to kiss it better or will you be alright?"

"No thanks!" Caleb said a little too quickly as he turned bright red.

"Calm down." Ember laughed patting Caleb's cybernetic arm as he rolled his sleeve down. "I was just joking."

She grabbed Caleb's jacket of the table and had a look at the sleeve to find that there was a hold in it about the size of the blisters.

"That'll need patching up." Ember remarked, handing Caleb his jacket.

"That can wait." Caleb replied as he put it back on and zipped it up. "We got plans to make!"

Ember smiled as Caleb jumped to his feet and went to grab some blue-prints which he then spread out on the table beside Ember. Ember turned sideways so she would be able to see the blue prints a little better and she hooked her left foot underneath the opposite knee.

"What's that then?" She asked, leaning her elbows on her leg and her chin on her hands.

"Blueprints of N-Lab." Caleb replied.

"Seriously?" Ember asked, staring at Caleb.

"Yeah, I found them this morning, hidden away in a dark corner I never check." Caleb replied. "I really should give this place a good clean out... plenty of time for that when the Roboidz are gone."

"Caleb, you're rambling." Ember remarked.

"So, blueprints of N-Lab." Caleb said as the two of them bent over it.

"Yeah." Ember nodded. "So, what's our plan?"

"I don't know." Caleb admitted.

"Alright..." Ember said slowly. "Well... we could figure out how to take out the Roboidz first?"

"Any ideas?" Caleb asked.

"Well, I was thinking that the simplest way to take them out would be water." Ember replied. "Water plus robotics equals one short circuited Roboid."

"Good idea." Caleb nodded, looking thoughtful. "One question, how are we going to get the water to the Roboidz?"

"We... make make-shift water bombs?" Ember suggested. "Water bombs would allow us to take out the Roboidz from a distance as well."

"We'd be better of sinking the ships." Caleb remarked.

"Yeah, don't think that water and your cybernetics would mix all that well." Ember shook her head.

Caleb and Ember discussed several other plans should the water bomb idea fail. The plan for the Shades that were walking around was that Ember would lure them into the web of lasers, seeing as the Shades probably wouldn't be smart enough to realize that the lasers would harm them, so basically they would take themselves out if everything went according to plan. To avoid any other Roboidz showing up, in case they had instant access to the camera feed inside N-Lab, Ember would set up a look of footage which would show that there was nothing wrong.

As a backup plan, which both Caleb and Ember hoped they didn't have to use, Caleb would take one of the laser cannons, which he had built to test the recruits, with him in case the water bombs ran out and more Roboidz showed up. Although Ember wasn't all that fond of the idea, seeing as laser cannons equalled a lot of noise, which would mean that more Roboidz to deal with, which was something that Ember wanted to avoid if she could.

Caleb decided that it would be best to test out whether the water bomb theory really worked or not, so Ember lead Caleb over to the medical lab she'd found the day before and they grabbed a few packets of surgical gloves before returning to the lair and filling a few of the gloves with water. After they'd filled up a few gloves, Caleb led Ember out onto the deck which was a spot that the Roboidz couldn't reach.

"So, want to drop the first one?" Ember grinned, holding out one of the bombs to Caleb.

Caleb grinned as he took the water bomb from Ember before leaning over the railing of the deck. Ember leaned on the railing beside him and watched as Caleb held out the glove over a Roboid that was standing on the deck below them. When Caleb dropped the glove, it fell on top of the Roboid and the glove broke, spilling water over the Roboid. They watched as the Roboid started to short circuit before it slumped forward as the electrical sparks stopped.

"Awesome." Ember grinned. "I can't believe that actually works!"

"You didn't know for sure?" Caleb asked, turning to look at Ember.

"Well, no, not really..." Ember shrugged. "I mean, they're being controlled by an evil super computer... I thought that it would've thought of the possibility of water damage."

"We're lucky Neuros didn't think of that." Caleb grinned.

"Very lucky." Ember agreed, grinning back. "Feel like some target practice?"

Caleb didn't even reply, he just grinned like a little boy on Christmas morning as he grabbed a water bomb from Ember. The two of them spend the next hour tossing the water bombs at the Roboidz before they went back inside FutureGate and walked back to the lair.

"That was brilliant!" Caleb grinned widely as they stepped into the lair.

"I know right?" Ember smiled. "So, what are we going to do now? It's too early to go to sleep and too late to go after Neuros."

"We could..." Caleb started before shrugging. "Watch a movie?"

"A movie?" Ember asked. "You've got movies here?"

"Yeah." Caleb nodded as he walked over to a desk and pulling a drawer open. "Early 21st century movies."

Ember walked over to him and looked into the drawer to find that there were a load of DVD cases in it.

"The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones..." Ember read out a few titles. "Frankenstein? It's more like a mix of late 20th century and early 21st century movies."

"Really?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah, really." Ember nodded. "But watching a movie is fine with me... you've got Troy too? I love that movie!"

"Never seen it before." Caleb shook his head.

"It's about this ancient Greek legend." Ember replied. "The Greeks wanted to invade this city called Troy, but seeing as it was so well defended; the Greeks built this giant horse which the Trojans brought into the city. During the night, the Greeks crawled out of the horse and attacked. It's where the phrase 'Trojan Horse' comes from. It's a great movie. It really is."

Caleb smirked before grabbing the DVD box from Ember's hand and walking over to a corner of the lair where an old TV was standing. Ember walked over to the corner and sat down on the ratty old couch that was standing in front of the TV as Caleb turned it on and put the DVD into it.

As the movie started to play, Caleb came to sit down beside Ember and the two of them sat watching the movie. On occasion, Ember glanced over at Caleb to find that he was looking completely fascinated by the events that were playing out on the screen. It reminded Ember of the fact that Caleb seemed a little like a child sometimes.

The way Caleb was watching the screen, it reminded Ember of the way Danny would always watch a movie he'd never seen before. The fascinated look on Caleb's face was exactly the same as Danny's would be if he watched a movie he didn't know but started to like. Ember looked back at the TV and let her mind wander on how things used to be like when Danny was still alive.

Instead of seeing the images of the movie, which was showing Achilles fighting Hector, the image started to blur and turned into images from Ember's memory. The way Danny would lean against her when they were watching a movie, how he'd hide his face against her side if there was a scary bit on the screen, the way he got excited when there was a load of action in a movie or get incredibly bored if there was something to do with romance.

"Ember, what are you doing?" Caleb asked.

"What?" Ember asked, being pulled from her memories and looking over at him. "I'm not doing anything."

"You're crying." Caleb remarked.

Ember frowned at Caleb for a moment before reaching a hand up to her face to find that there were indeed tears running down her cheek.

"Oh..." she said slowly. "I didn't realize..."

"Is something wrong?" Caleb asked.

"No, I'm fine." Ember replied, wiping the tears of her cheek. "I was just thinking about my little brother..."

"You miss him?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah, I do." Ember nodded. "I was just remembering how it used to be like to watch a movie with him... it doesn't matter though, I'm fine. I think I'll go to bed... I'm kind of tired."

Ember wasn't actually feeling tired at all, she was feeling embarrassed because she'd started crying in front of Caleb. So she decided to avoid further embarrassment by making a quick escape. She walked into the sleeping quarters and pushed the door closed behind her before walking over to her bed. after sitting down, she pulled of her boots and leather vest before lying down and pulling the blanket up over her shoulder as she turned on her side with her back facing the door.

Ember didn't fall asleep until after Caleb had gone to bed though. She was nervous about facing Neuros, really, really nervous. She had no idea what was going to happen, whether they were going to win or lose, whatever the outcome might be, she would do her best to make Caleb proud. No matter what.

**So that's it for chapter 8. Hope you enjoyed it:)**

**The next chapter should be up on Friday. Let me know what you think:)**

**~ Abby.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Hiya!  
Here it is, chapter 9. Thanks to everyone whose read and/or reviewed! Hope you enjoy this one!**

Chapter 9: Neuros.

Ember woke up only to find that it was still dark outside. Even though she had only gotten maybe a few hours of sleep, she was feeling properly rested and wide awake. It was probably the nerves though, but Ember didn't really care. She glanced over to Caleb's bed to find that he was still sleeping, this time without nightmares for which Ember was glad. She silently climbed to her feet and grabbed her boots before silently leaving the sleeping quarters. She dropped down on the couch and started putting on her boots as she glanced out through the small window. She decided that the best thing to do was to get some fresh air. After brushing her hair with a brush she'd found in the boxes in the storage room, she grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper and scribbled a quick note to Caleb to let him know where she was before silently leaving the lair and making her way outside.

Once she got outside, the cold morning air blew through her hair and she walked over to a spot that was out of the wind. She didn't know whether she was facing the right direction to see the sunrise or not, but she figured that she could always turn around. Ember pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she remembered crying the night before. She buried her face against her knees in embarrassment for a moment before leaning her chin on them.

"I'm such idiot..." Ember whispered to herself.

It hadn't been her intention at all to start crying when she remembered what Danny used to do when he was watching a movie. She hadn't even realized that she had started. And to do so in front of Caleb, who probably didn't have a clue how to deal with a crying girl, made her flush in embarrassment again.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Ember chided herself.

The thought that she was being too hard on herself did cross her mind, although it quickly disappeared as she saw a faint line of orange appearing on the horizon, indicating that the sun was starting to rise. Ember smiled a little to herself as she watched the starting sunrise, it was comforting to see something so familiar while she was so far from home.

A while later, the sun had climbed into the sky high enough for its rays to start warming Ember. She crossed her legs underneath her and closed her eyes as the sun warmed her up, thinking that some meditating would calm her down before they went to face Neuros. The sounds of Roboidz walking around on the lower decks could be heard, but Ember drowned the noise out, knowing that if everything went well, they wouldn't be walking around for much longer.

Although Ember was terrified of the events to come, events that would decide the future of the human race in 2110, she was feeling oddly calm about them for the time being she knew that the moment she stood in front of the door of N-Lab, she would be a nervous wreck. Ember opened her eyes when she felt someone sitting down beside her only to find that it was Caleb.

"You're up early." Caleb remarked.

"Yeah." Ember replied. "Woke up and couldn't fall back asleep, so I thought I'd go out and watch the sunrise, do a little meditating."

"I've never seen a sunrise before." Caleb said. "Never had time. But after the Roboidz are gone, there'll be plenty of time for that."

"Yeah, you're right." Ember agreed.

Ember looked back out over the waters again and saw that the sun was reflecting into it, making it seem larger than it actually was. Ember couldn't think of a more beautiful sight on the Earth than a sunrise, other than maybe a sunset. For a moment she wondered if she would ever be able to see one again after today as a moment of fear entered her mind. Fear of not surviving the final battle.

Her thought was forgotten when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see it was Caleb, for some reason he was looking worried.

"What's wrong?" Ember asked.

"I was just about to ask you that." Caleb replied. "Why were you crying yesterday?"

"I was thinking about my little brother." Ember replied, leaning back against the wall and stretching out her legs in front of her.

"You said that." Caleb nodded.

Ember sighed when she could hear the unasked question in that statement. Caleb didn't understand why she'd been thinking about Danny.

"His name was Danny and it's been 5 years since he died..." Ember said. "I had just turned 15 back then; he was only 9 when he died..."

"He died?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah." Ember nodded.

"Whoa…" Caleb said slowly before grimacing a little. "Sorry, I don't know what to say to that."

"It's okay." Ember shrugged before smiling slightly. "I get your point though, thank you."

"What happened?" Caleb asked.

"We never found out." Ember shook her head. "Danny had gone out to a playfield with some kids in the neighbourhood. He said he'd be back before dinner, but he never showed up, so we went out looking for him. The kids he'd gone out to play with didn't see what happened. It took the police 2 weeks to find Danny's body... he was murdered... and the police never found the murderer..."

Ember sighed deeply as she felt a headache coming on. When she glanced over at Caleb she found that he was looking completely stunned at her explanations.

"Why would someone do that?" Caleb asked.

"Do what?" Ember asked, frowning a little.

"Kill a kid." Caleb said.

"I wish I knew." Ember replied. "Then I could've stopped it from happening... Caleb, you've got to understand that my world isn't perfect... it might be a little better than this one, but we've got wars to deal with too, there's no such thing as world peace where I'm from."

"Oh..." Caleb said, looking a little put out.

"Sorry." Ember said, putting her hand on Caleb's shoulder. "Didn't mean to shatter the image you had of 2010."

"It's okay." Caleb shrugged. "Suppose I never gave it that much thought. And I'm sorry about your brother. Is that the phrase? I'm sorry? I'm not really sure, I saw it in a movie once..."

Ember smiled a little before hugging Caleb for a few moments.

"I'm sorry is the phrase." Ember smiled as she let go of Caleb. "And thank you."

"You're welcome." Caleb smiled back. "So, what do you say we go kick some kettle-head but?"

"I'm all for that." Ember grinned.

Caleb jumped to his feet and pulled Ember to hers before the two of them went back to the lair to prepare for their fight with Neuros.

While Ember set up the feed loop for the security camera's, Caleb went to collect one of the laser cannons from the deck and when he came back, he started filling up the surgical gloves with water. Once Ember was done and everything for the feed loop was set, she joined Caleb in the storage room to help her with making water bombs.

"Ready?" Caleb asked as Ember zipped up the backpack that contained the water bombs.

"As I'll ever be." She nodded.

They left the lair and made their way over to N-Lab. The progress was slow due to the weight both of them were carrying and seeing as there were a lot of Roboidz out on patrol as if they knew what was going to happen. When they finally got to the door that lead into N-Lab, Caleb pulled Ember back into an alcove close by where Ember slipped the backpack off and put it on the ground.

"I can't believe we're finally here." Caleb said as Ember pulled some cord, which she had grabbed of a workbench, from her pocket. "After 5 years we're finally here!"

"Yeah, awesome." Ember replied trying to hide she was nervous as she tied her hair back in tight bun. "You sure we're ready for this?"

"Positive." Caleb replied as Ember took of her vest and dropped it to the floor.

Ember nodded when she saw the look of determination on Caleb's face, it was going to be now or never.

"Well, let's go do this." Ember remarked.

"Yeah, for humanity." Caleb said.

"For the planet." Ember agreed.

They left the safety of the alcove and walked over to the door that would get them inside N-Lab. Ember was really starting to feel the nerves now, not to mention she was starting to feel that the pressure of the success of this mission on her shoulders. She was well aware that if she messed this up somehow, their fates were going to be sealed.

"Good luck." Caleb said as he reached for the door handle.

"You too." Ember replied, pulling out a few of the water bombs to use herself before handing the backpack to Caleb.

The second that Caleb pulled the door open, Ember rushed into the room and threw one of the water bombs at the first Roboid she saw. She didn't bother to watch it short-circuit as she tossed the second one. She kept going until her water bombs had ran out before running over to the web of lasers to start working her way through it. She glanced over to see how Caleb was doing and she couldn't help but smile a little to see that he looked like he was seriously enjoying taking out the Roboidz with the water bombs. He was ducking and waving his way through the Roboidz, tossing the water bombs as he went. He was pretty quick when it came to taking out the Roboidz.

"Get your skates on, Ember!" Caleb yelled.

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Ember shouted.

"And watch the Shades!" Caleb yelled.

Ember looked around to find that 5 Shades were coming towards her, which made her panic for a split second before she was able to focus again.

"Come and get me, metal heads!" Ember yelled at them before she stepped into the web.

Ember started to weave her way through the web as fast as she could, but also making sure that she didn't touch any of the lasers. She wasn't sure what it would do to her if she did happen to touch one, but she doubted that it was going to be something good. Ember stopped when she was a little way into web and turned to face the Shades which were slowly making progress towards her.

"Come on then tin heads!" Ember yelled at them. "Come and get me! You're not scared of a little human, are you?"

Ember kept moving further into the web, trying to keep an eye on everything that was going on around her. The Shades had almost reached the web and remaining Roboidz that hadn't been taken out yet were focussing on trying to take out Caleb instead of trying to take her out. They clearly saw Caleb as the biggest threat for now.

Ember turned around when she heard something starting to hiss and saw that the plan when it came to taking out the Shades was working. They were walking straight into the web and weren't realizing at all that it could harm them, which resulted in them killing themselves.

"The Shades are down!" Ember yelled as she looked over to where Caleb was running to get away from a Roboid.

"Good job!" Caleb yelled back. "Get a move on!"

Ember nodded to herself and she was about to move forward when her left elbow touched onto of the lasers which made her cry out in pain. The laser had burnt right through the fabric of her jumpsuit and into her skin, leaving an ugly burn.

"You okay?" Caleb called.

"I'm fine!" Ember replied.

She tried to ignore the pain as much as she could as she moved on. But now Ember had become painfully aware of the fact that moving through the web of lasers wasn't a game. All of it was real, not to mention moving through the web was a deadly game that she didn't want to lose at all costs.

"Keep moving." Ember whispered to herself to try and keep calm. "Just keep moving and keep focused."

"Take that, kettle heads." Caleb exclaimed.

Ember stopped and glanced around to find that all the Roboidz had been taken care of, although now that things were quiet, they could hear the sound of approaching Roboidz.

"Uh oh." Caleb said. "Ember, get your skates on!"

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Ember replied.

She was about half way through the web and she didn't want to rush things any more than she had too, but seeing as there were more Roboidz on the way, she didn't have a choice. Knowing that it was the stupidest thing she could possibly do, she decided to throw all caution to the wind and risk rushing through the web.

"Here they come!" Caleb yelled.

Ember stopped and looked around for a moment only to see that Caleb had grabbed the laser cannon just as the door was thrown off its hinges. The Roboidz started to move into the room and Ember felt her heart sinking into her shoes as she watched. Ember turned back to face the podium and started moving again.

"Come on." Ember whispered, trying to talk courage into herself. "Come on, you can do it... you've got to do it... for the planet!"

She drowned out the sounds of the lasers that were being fired around her. Ember was getting closer and closer to Neuros and the closer she got, she got more determined, which also meant that she was getting more careless. Because of the amount of adrenaline that was surging through her body, she could barely feel the pain of the lasers that managed to make contact on her body. Ember gasped a little as she felt an intense pain in her right thigh as a laser made contact and that was the same moment that the voice started talking.

"Caleb!" it yelled.

The voice spat out Caleb's name with so much venom that it made Ember freeze completely. Ember glanced up to where Caleb was and she felt what was left of her courage disappearing when she saw that he was surrounded by war Droidz. All of them had their gun arm raised and pointed at Caleb, ready to fire when given the order.

"Finally we meet." The voice, which Ember knew was Neuros, said although her voice was dripping with sarcasm.

Ember couldn't believe that this was happening; she was so close to grabbing the Bio-Rod that would shut down Neuros and the Roboidz. She felt it wasn't fair, weren't the good guys the ones who were always supposed to win in a situation like this one?

"I have waited a long time to crush you and your trained monkeys." Neuros continued.

"This coming from a brain in a lava lamp!" Ember yelled, hoping that she was sounding a lot braver than she felt.

"Silence, ignorant child!" Neuros spat, which made Ember shudder again.

A quick glance around told Ember that there were a few Roboidz standing around the web as well and they were aiming their guns at her. The Bio-Rod was just an arm's length away. All Ember had to do was reach out and grab it and it would be over.

"Fine, you got me." Caleb stated.

Ember's eyes snapped back up at Caleb. He was still holding the laser cannon and it looked like he had pulled himself up to his full height, his shoulders were squared, ready to take on anything. To Ember, he looked exactly what a true leader of a resistance should look like. Although she could see that there was an underlying tension in his body, which was to be expected when you were surrounded by a bunch of dangerous Wardroidz, but it wasn't that. It was something else, and Ember just couldn't put her finger on it what it was.

"Do with me what you want." Caleb stated which made Ember stare at him in surprise. "Just let her go."

"No, you can't!" Ember yelled.

"It's alright." Caleb stated.

She couldn't believe that Caleb was just willing to give up like this, it just didn't seem possible. He'd spend 5 years fighting the Roboidz, he couldn't just give up. She didn't know if Caleb had a plan or not, but she wasn't going to let Caleb do this. She glanced back to the Roboidz that were standing outside the web and for a moment she felt all her courage sinking again. She decided to make grab for the Bio-Rod, but if she didn't time it just right, the Roboidz would fire and she would get killed.

"No." Neuros sneered. "You can watch her die."

"No!" Caleb yelled.

"Kill her!" Neuros ordered.

The second that Neuros had said the first word, Ember's arm shot out and her hand closed around the Bio-Rod but not before she had seen Caleb nodding at her, clearly signalling to grab the Bio-Rod. As Ember thought back on it, that was clearly what Caleb had been planning, to buy time for Ember to grab the Bio-Rod. The moment her hand closed around it, she pulled her arm back and the Bio-Rod came free from its fittings.

The effect was instant, the moment the Bio-Rod had left its fittings, it seemed like a jolt went through all the Roboidz that were in the room. But that didn't happen before the Roboidz that were standing beside the web had fired their weapons. Ember acted on pure instinct as she dived forward, past the podium on which Neuros' tube had been mounted. Ember heard Caleb yelling as she hid behind the podium as the Roboidz' shots made impact with it. She covered her head and made herself as small as she could when she heard the impact and the next thing she knew, a shower of sparks fell over her that burned her hands and the back of her neck.

A second later, the entire room of N-Lab had fallen quiet, so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Ember slowly uncovered her head and saw that she was still holding the Bio-Rod in her hand. She looked up at Neuros' rod to find that it had been shattered. She had been destroyed. It was ironic in a way, for Neuros to be destroyed by her own soldiers.

"We did it..." Ember whispered as soon as the thought entered her mind. "I can't believe it... we did it..."

"You did it!" Caleb's voice suddenly yelled.

Ember almost jumped out of her skin when she realized that she wasn't the only person inside of N-Lab. She turned to face the resistance leader to find that he was running towards her, grinning widely. The second that he had reached her, he pulled Ember to her feet and grabbed her into a rib crushing hug.

"We did it!" Caleb yelled a she lifted Ember of her feet.

Ember laughed as she finally realized that Neuros was defeated.

"You were brilliant!" Caleb continued as he put Ember back on her feet.

"No, we were brilliant!" Ember replied before turning to face the podium. "Take that, Neuros! Don't mess with us humans!"

Now that everything that had happened had finally been processed in Ember's mind, she felt herself buzzing with adrenaline and excitement. She felt like she could take on anything that 2110 decided to throw at her. Ember turned to Caleb again and without thinking about it, she threw her arms around his neck in a hug.

"We did it!" Ember repeated. "She's gone!"

"Yes we did!" Caleb grinned as Ember let go of him. "Cybele!"

Ember jumped out of her skin when Caleb yelled this, it was completely unexpected for him to yell that while they were both ecstatic that Neuros was defeated.

"I must tell Cybele!" Caleb continued.

Ember stared after Caleb as he started running for the door of N-Lab before deciding that the best course of action was to chase him before she got lost in FutureGate.

**So, this is it for chapter 9 and the end of Neuros! The battle with Arkon is coming up in the next chapter as well as Ember meeting Cybele! I'll try to have the next chapter up on Sunday at the latest, please let me know what you think!**

**~ Abby**


	10. Chapter 10

**Hello!**

**Here's chapter 10. Enjoy:D**

Chapter 10: Arkon

Ember followed Caleb deeper into the bowels of FutureGate as fast as she could as they ran through FutureGate, they kept running into deactivated Roboidz and Shades, but they didn't stop to check them out properly. By the time that they finally reached Cybele's hide out, Ember could feel her legs burning with exhaustion as she stood at the top of the steps that Caleb had jumped down.

"Cybele!" Caleb yelled in excitement. "Cybele, we did it."

Ember stared as Cybele appeared. It was unlike anything that Ember had ever seen before and she couldn't help but stare. Cybele was basically a ball of light which lit up red as she spoke. Ember glanced over at Caleb to find that he was practically bouncing around with joy and she couldn't help but grin.

"Well done Caleb." Cybele praised, sounding proud

"The plan worked perfectly!" Caleb continued, making wild gestures in his excitement. "You should've seen it! It was brilliant!"

"And the recruit?" Cybele asked.

"She was brilliant!" Caleb replied.

He walked over to where Ember was still standing at the top of the steps, staring at Cybele. It wasn't until Caleb had caught her hand that Ember had realized that Caleb had walked up to her and he pulled her down the steps to stand beside him in front of Cybele.

"Good." Cybele said, sounding proud. "Is this Ember, Caleb?"

"Yes." Caleb nodded.

"It's an honour to meet you, Cybele." Ember said, feeling a little awkward as she knew that Cybele was scrutinizing her.

She couldn't really blame the computer for that though, if she was in Cybele's position, she would've done the same thing; after all, Cybele was the person who had been taking care of Caleb for the past 5 years.

"And you, Ember." Cybele replied. "You have done well."

"Thank you." Ember nodded, feeling a sense of pride flooding through her.

From what Caleb had told her, Cybele had practically been like a mother to him over the past 5 years, and she'd just said that Ember had done well. Ember smiled proudly as she felt Caleb's human arm being wrapped around her shoulders.

"You choose your unit well, Caleb." Cybele said proudly. "Now like a good leader and his soldier after a successful campaign, you've both earned your rest."

"Thanks." Caleb replied before grinning at Ember, who returned the gesture. "I reckon we have."

"But unfortunately there's no time." Cybele continued.

"Why?" Ember asked.

"There's one more battle you have to fight." Cybele replied.

"but I thought with N-Lab powered down, the can heads would run out of juice, surely it's just a matter of lying low and waiting for them to keel over isn't it?" Caleb asked.

"There's still the wardroid leader, Arkon." Cybele replied.

"Arkon?" both Caleb and Ember repeated.

"He led the Roboidz back to Earth after the revolt on Gamma Sephi 4." Cybele explained. "He's powerful and clever and we can't take the change of others rallying to him again. You must destroy him, Caleb."

"Well, if it's just one Roboid, we can take him on." Ember said before turning to Caleb. "Right?"

"Right." Caleb grinned before turning to Cybele and turning serious again. "Where is he?"

"The upper decks." Cybele replied.

Caleb didn't even wait to say goodbye to Cybele as he started running up the steps. Ember gave chase and she was hot on his feels as he led the way to the upper decks.

They got there after 5 minutes of sprinting and as soon as Ember followed Caleb out on the deck, she was aware of the fact that there didn't seem to be any wind despite the fact that they were out on open waters. It was almost as if it was the silence before the storm... the sun was high in the sky and Ember could feel it beating down on them, not to mention she could feel it aggravating the burns on her neck, making them hurt. Ahead of them, they could see that last Roboid that they had to defeat standing with its back to them.

"Arkon!" Caleb yelled.

Both Caleb and Ember skidded to a halt a few meters away from Arkon and it turned around to face them.

"So this is what it comes down to Arkon?" Caleb asked. "Man versus Machine."

"Don't forget about me." Ember said, not taking her eyes of Arkon.

"Or more accurately man-machine and brave girl versus an overfed junk heap on legs." Caleb corrected himself.

"Thank you." Ember said.

"At last we meet, Caleb." Arkon said.

Ember's eyes widened, as far as she knew, Roboidz couldn't talk, so why could this one?

"You've learned to speak have you?" Caleb asked.

"You have destroyed my army, now I will destroy you." Arkon said.

"Come on then, if you think you're hard enough." Caleb taunted as he started running for Arkon.

"No don't!" Ember yelled.

She watched as Caleb just barely managed to roll aside when Arkon made a grab at him. Ember didn't know what to do, she felt like her feet were glued to the deck. She watched as Arkon kept trying to hit Caleb, who just barely got out of the way each time.

"You are no match for me, human." Arkon stated.

"You're gonna have to do better than that, Arkon." Caleb taunted. "You couldn't find me all these years while I was right under your can-head nose. What makes you think you can do it now?"

The longer that Ember watched, which was basically not more than a few seconds, Caleb seemed to get more and more exhausted with every passing second. While Arkon had its back turned to Ember, she caught sight of the bio-rod on Arkon's back. In that split second that it took for Ember to see the Bio-Rod and for the information to click in her mind, she started running towards Arkon, finally getting the feeling in her feet back. She figured that if pulling out the Bio-Rod had stopped Neuros, it would do the same for a Roboid, and seeing that Caleb was distracting Arkon, she had a chance to get to the Bio-Rod before Caleb got seriously hurt.

She skidded to a halt behind Arkon and reached for the Bio-Rod only for her hand to hit an invisible wall that ended up hurting her hand. Ember gasped in pain and looked down at her hand to find that it was starting to burn bright red. What she hadn't realized was that Arkon had turned to face her, clearly sensing that there was someone behind him.

"Get down!" Caleb yelled.

When Ember looked up, she saw Arkon was facing her and her eyes widened again as she felt that her feet were nailed to the deck once again.

"Ember, duck!" Ember could hear Caleb yelling as Arkon swung one of its metal arms.

Ember realized too late what was going to happen when Arkon's arm made contact. Its arm hit Ember in the stomach, not only winding her, but it knocked her aside as if she was nothing more than a rag doll. The second that Ember hit the ground, she felt pain exploding all the way down the right side of her ribs and she felt like she couldn't breathe for a few moments.

She gasped in air as she turned her head to find that Arkon had managed to throw Caleb of his feet. Caleb somehow managed to stagger back onto his feet but before he could get out of range, Arkon was on him again. Only this time, Arkon managed to grab Caleb by the neck and lifted him of his feet. Even from the distance that Ember was at, which was a good 15 meters away, she could hear Caleb choking for air.

Now, if you wanted to feel Ember's wrath, then the best way to go about it was hurting her friend, which was the reason that Ember felt pure hatred and anger rushing through her veins, making her forget about the pain she was in. As she struggled to her feet, she saw a long metal pole lying close by, so she picked it up as she staggered over to Arkon, whose back was turned to her.

"Arkon!" Ember bellowed in rage. "Let the hell go of him, you over grown garbage bin and fight me like a man!"

Once she was close enough, she swung as hard as she could and it hit Arkon's back. The bar bounced back because of the shield that surrounded Arkon and Ember lost her grip on it. She didn't really care about that though, seeing that the blow threw Arkon off enough for Caleb to be able to get free. Ember watched as Caleb rolled out of the way as soon as his feet touched the ground before looking back at Arkon.

"Come on then, rust bucket of bolts!" Ember yelled. "Bring it on!"

Because of the anger that was surging through her body, Ember realized too late that what she was doing was one of the most idiotic things she'd ever done in her entire life.

"Ember, get out of there!" Caleb yelled.

Before Ember could run, Arkon had reached out and grabbed hold of Ember's throat. She could feel the metal fingers tightening for a few moments before Arkon tossed her aside, presumably thinking that Ember wasn't a huge threat to him.

Arkon had tossed Ember towards one of the walls of FutureGate and after she'd hit the wall, gravity pulled her down to the ground where she lay still. There wasn't a single part of her body that wasn't hurting. She wanted to do nothing more than just lie there and sleep for a month.

"Get up." A small voice at the back of her head ordered. "Get up! Caleb is counting on you! Get the hell up!"

Ember opened her eyes and tried to push herself to her feet, but she found that she couldn't.

"Now, normally I hate violence." Caleb's voice said.

She looked over to find that he had the bar on metal balanced on his foot. He was looking completely calm as Arkon was walking towards him.

"But when a man's faced with a towering evil beast, bent on his own destruction..." Caleb continued as he kicked up the bar and caught it in both hands. "He's allowed to change his mind."

Ember watched as Caleb swung the bar again and again and each time he hit Arkon, a small explosion went off. Caleb eventually ducked down low and charged at Arkon, holding the bar out as a battering ram. As Caleb yelled a battle cry, the bar jammed into Arkon's middle and he was pushed back until he was pushed the edge of the deck into the waters below. Caleb staggered back a few paces before coming to a halt.

"And THAT is mission over!" Caleb exclaimed before tossing the bar down to the ground.

Ember couldn't help but smile as she started to force herself to her feet before starting to stagger over to Caleb, who was turning to face her.

"You did it." Ember said as Caleb rushed to walk over to her. "You beat him..."

When Caleb reached her, Ember's knees started to give out but before she could drop to the ground, Caleb caught hold of her and helped her sit down on the ground. Ember took the moment to wrap her arms around Caleb's neck and hugged him tightly.

"No we didn't." Caleb replied.

Ember pulled back and stared at Caleb. For a moment she was dreading that there was going to be another fight they'd have to win before it was over, but to her surprise, Caleb gave her a massive, beaming grin.

"We did it!" he grinned. "The two of us! We beat the kettle heads!"

Ember grinned back before hugging Caleb again. She was starting to feel ecstatic again but it wasn't driving the pain away at all.

"No matter what the universe throws at us, humanity will win every time!" Ember smiled despite the pain.

Caleb helped Ember to her feet and the two of them walked over to the edge of the ship to see whether Arkon was floating around somewhere in the water, but it turned out that he'd sunken deep, completely out of sight and as far as Ember was concerned, that meant out of sight, out of mind.

Caleb and Ember walked back to Cybele to tell her the good news and she had been pleased, really, really pleased. But she had asked to tell her what had happened, so Caleb and Ember told her everything. After the story of the fight against Neuros and Arkon had been told, Cybele told them to get patched up and get some rest.

By the time that the two of them got to the lair, Ember was really struggling to keep standing on her feet, so much so that Caleb ended up carrying her.

"Here we are." Caleb said as he stepped into the lair.

Ember grimaced a little as Caleb set her down on her feet and she limped over to a chair before sitting down in it. Without saying anything she started unzipping her jumpsuit and started pulling it off to inspect the damage. Her hands were burned because of the sparks and Arkon's shield, her elbow had a nasty long burn on it from where it had touched the laser and through her white tank top, she could see that her ribs were starting to bruise already.

"You're hurt." Caleb stated.

"It's not that bad." Ember shook her head.

"What do I do?" Caleb asked. "Ember, I don't know what to do."

Ember got back to her feet and limped over to Caleb before putting her hands on his shoulders.

"Calming down would be a good place to start." Ember said calmly."Caleb, if you want to help me, panicking isn't the way to go about it, alright?"

"Yeah, alright." Caleb nodded. "What do I do?"

"Get me some burn ointment and bandages from the bag." Ember replied. "I'll talk you through what you've got to do."

Caleb nodded and rushed over to where the bag with medical supplies was before collecting the stuff that Ember had told him to get. With Ember's instructions, Caleb managed to treat each and every one of Ember's burns, as well as taking care of her bruised ribs although by that time, Ember was feeling like a mummy. After Caleb was done, Ember took some painkillers before having a look at Caleb's injuries. Other than a few bruises, he was completely fine, although she couldn't help but grimace when she saw ugly bruises forming on Caleb's throat from where Arkon had grabbed him.

"Come on." Caleb said, helping Ember to her feet. "Let's get some sleep."

"Smashing idea." Ember nodded.

The two of them walked into the sleeping quarters and dropped down on Caleb's bed space. Neither of them said a word to the other as they got comfortable and as sleep started to overtake them.

**So this is it for chapter 10.  
Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!:D  
The next chapter should be up on Saturday night.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Hello!**

**Here's Chapter 11. **

**Thanks to everyone who's read and/or reviewed!:D**

Chapter 11: Caleb's Past.

As Ember woke up, she felt her ribs burning with pain and as she opened her eyes, she saw that Caleb was still fast asleep beside her. She silently thanked her lucky stars that he was sleeping peacefully instead of having a nightmare; Ember didn't know how she was going to be able to deal with that while she was still feeling as exhausted as she did.

She also discovered the reason why her ribs were hurting so badly. Caleb was using her as his teddy bear. Seeing as Ember couldn't really lie on her sides, she'd been sleeping on her back and somewhere during the night, Caleb had turned to face her and put an arm around her, but now he was holding her against him so tightly that it was hurting.

"God..." Ember whispered, flicking the bangs from her face.

She carefully moved Caleb's arm away from her waist and slipped out of bed before putting the blankets back over Caleb, making sure that he would remain warm while she went to get some more painkillers. it took Ember some effort to climb to her feet and after she'd done it, she started limping towards the door of the sleeping quarters. When she stepped out of the sleeping quarters, she limped straight over to where she'd left the painkillers. After taking two of them, she pulled the cord she'd been using to keep her hair up in a bun from her hair.

She sighed when she felt that her hair was starting to get a little greasy, she'd give anything to be able to have a hot bath or even a shower, but seeing as that wasn't possible, she shook the thoughts off as she tied her hair back in a loose braid. Ember glanced through the small window to find that the sun hadn't even come up yet, so she decided to go back to bed to catch up on some much needed, healing sleep.

Just as she was about to limp over to the sleeping quarters, the screaming began. She could hear that the screams were coming from Caleb and that spurred her into action. Ember rushed into the room to find that Caleb was tossing and turning, not only that, but it also looked like he was trying to fight off an invisible enemy. He kept yelling 'no' and Ember's name over and over again and Ember didn't know what she was supposed to do for a moment. But when she saw how pale Caleb had gone and how scared he looked, she had to do something.

"Caleb!" Ember yelled, dropping down to her knees beside him. "Caleb! Wake up! It's a nightmare!"

She grabbed hold of his arms to make sure that he wouldn't end up hurting himself, but this turned out to be a mistake. As soon as Ember's hands closed around Caleb's wrists, he woke up. His eyes were still blurred by sleep and the first thing he did was fighting back with much more force. Ember found that Caleb was a lot stronger than she was and after only a few seconds, Caleb had been able to free his arms despite Ember's best efforts and he shoved her aside.

Ember landed on her left side and she gasped for air as she felt winded again while pain was exploding across her ribs. When she got her breath, she sat up and saw that Caleb was sitting up in his bed. He was looking up in confusion as if he didn't know where he was and his eyes were shining with tears.

"It's alright, Caleb." Ember said softly as she slowly reached out towards him. "You're safe."

When Ember reached out a hand to him, Caleb flinched back for a moment before looking up at Ember.

"Ember?" Caleb asked, looking confused.

"Yeah, it's me." Ember nodded. "It's okay, it was just a nightmare, you're safe."

While Ember spoke, she reached out a hand to Caleb's face and the moment that her fingers brushed past Caleb's cheek in a gesture of reassurance, the floodgates opened and Caleb threw himself at Ember.

"It's okay." Ember said softly as she hugged Caleb to her. "You're safe; it was all just a dream."

Not knowing what else she could do for him, she just held Caleb as he cried, whispering soothing words. She didn't know what Caleb had dreamt, but she did know that whatever it was, it must've been terrible if it had caused that reaction. After a while, Caleb stopped crying, but he didn't make a move to pull away from Ember.

"Are you okay now?" Ember asked softly, running her hand through his hair as she tried to comfort him.

"I think so." Caleb replied quietly.

Ember bit her lip a little; the tone of voice that he was using reminded her a lot of how Danny used to sound like when he was terrified of something. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind, telling herself that she had to focus on the task at hand.

"What was your dream about?" Ember asked.

"They..." Caleb said hesitantly. "We didn't defeat Neuros... she wanted us turned into Shades..."

Ember understood why Caleb had started crying now, that was one hell of a terrifying dream. She didn't blame him at all for crying about stuff like that. It also explained why he'd been fighting in his sleep; he had probably been trying to fight of Roboidz in his nightmare. Ember pulled back and when she looked at Caleb she saw that the tear tracks were still on his face.

"It was just a dream." Ember said softly, using her sleeve to gently wipe the tears away. "We did defeat Neuros."

"It felt so real." Caleb said, sounding like a frightened little boy.

"They usually do." Ember replied, nodding slightly. "But it wasn't. It was just your subconscious trying to get rid of the fears you must've felt at some point yesterday, that's why you had the nightmare... let's get some more sleep, okay? You and I both need it."

Caleb nodded silently and the two of them got comfortable again. Ember watched as Caleb closed his eyes and she decided that she was going to stay awake until she was sure that Caleb had fallen back asleep again. As she kept an eye on Caleb, her mind started to wander.

She had felt that it was a tiny bit weird for Caleb to behave the way he had. He had seriously reminded her of a 5 year old boy who had woken up from a nightmare. Although she figured that she couldn't blame him at all. From what Ember had gathered, Caleb didn't remember a single thing from his life before he'd been cryogenically frozen at 17, which probably meant that he had to be re-taught everything when it came to handling emotions. And seeing as he only had Cybele for company the past 5 years, his emotions probably hadn't developed all that well.

One Ember was sure that Caleb had fallen asleep an hour later; she closed her eyes in the hopes of catching at least a few hours more sleep. She did know one thing though; she wasn't going to make the mistake of leaving Caleb on his own again when he was asleep. She had a feeling that his nightmare had started the second that she had gone to get some more painkillers, although she wasn't eager to test that theory, seeing that Caleb had freaked out so badly about his nightmares.

The second time that Ember woke up, the sun had come up and she sighed as she rubbed her eyes. She glanced around to see whether Caleb was still sleeping or not, but she found that Caleb was already out of bed. She sighed again as she climbed to her feet and walked out into the main room of the lair to find that Caleb was tinkering with something.

"Hey." Ember said as she walked over to him.

"Hey." Caleb replied, not looking up.

Ember glanced over his shoulder to find that he was working on something that looked like a PDA.

"What's that?" Ember asked.

"Don't know." Caleb shrugged. "That's what I'm trying to find out.

Ember nodded silently and suppressed a sigh at Caleb's behaviour. He wasn't being his usual cheery self and she didn't like it one bit. She could tell that there was something bothering him, but she couldn't put her finger on it at all and she hated that. Then she thought about the nightmare he had during the night and the way he had responded to it, she realized that that was what was probably brothering him. Caleb was probably feeling embarrassed for his behaviour. Ember reached out and put her hand on his back.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Think so." Caleb nodded.

"You sure?" Ember asked. "You look pretty shaken."

"Yeah." Caleb said. "I'm sorry about last night."

"It's okay." Ember shook her head. "Nightmares happen, it's not like we can control our dreams."

"No, I meant shoving you." Caleb replied. "I thought you were a Roboid."

"I'm okay." Ember replied. "You didn't shove me that hard. Don't worry about that, oaky?"

"Okay..." Caleb said quietly, nodding slightly.

Ember smiled a little before she reached out to hug Caleb. Caleb was a little surprised at first but then he relaxed into it and returned it. When Ember pulled back she found that Caleb was still looking miserable.

"Caleb, would you mind doing me a favour?" Ember asked.

"What kind of favour?" Caleb asked.

"Smile." Ember replied. "The whole doom and gloom look doesn't suit you. We beat Neuros and Arkon, we should be celebrating!"

"Yeah, we should." Caleb grinned. "Oh! Now Neuros is gone, we can see what's in the Cycon archive!"

Ember felt her heart sinking at the statement, she had hope that Caleb had forgotten about it, but it seemed that her lucky stars didn't feel like spreading the luck that day.

"Are you sure?" Ember asked. "I mean, there's going to be plenty of time for that later! Let's go do something. Let's go outside, get some fresh air!"

"No, we should have a look at the archive." Caleb shook his head. "What was in it? You completed it, didn't you?"

"Uh... there was mostly information about how the Roboidz revolted in it." Ember lied as she started up the computer and plugged in the cord that would get them access to the mainframe. "Who created them, that sort of stuff."

"Really?" Caleb asked. "The whole history of the Roboidz is in there?"

"Yeah, everything." Ember nodded.

She booted up the computer and after some digging around, Ember got access to the Cycon Archive which had been completely unlocked. Over the next two hours, the two of them, mostly Caleb, looked at every single entry that was in the archive and watched and listened to every single thing. Ember couldn't help the shudder that ran down her spine at hearing the Eclipse, Jupiter, Moon part again.

"Wow." Caleb remarked when they were done watching everything from the Archive except one thing.

There was still the message from Laura Gant to Caleb. Ember hadn't dug up that file on the Archive just yet, and no matter how guilty she felt for not showing Caleb that file yet, she didn't want to see her friend hurt.

"That Goldschmidt woman was spot on when it came to the Roboidz." Caleb remarked as Ember looked up at him. "And that boy, the one who was sick, I wonder what happened to him."

Ember felt her heart sinking as she realized that the time had come to tell Caleb about his heritage.

"I know what happened to him..." Ember said quietly.

"What do you mean?" Caleb asked. "What's wrong? You've gone all quiet."

"Caleb... the boy from the scan..." Ember started before sighing sadly. "I'm better off showing you..."

"What do you mean?" Caleb asked.

"All of that what you just read and heard and saw, that wasn't all there is in the Archive." Ember replied, feeling her heart sinking lower with every second. "I managed to dig further into it because I know how to do a bit of hacking... I found a message meant for the boy from the scan..."

"Okay, but why have you gone all quiet?" Caleb asked.

"You should sit down for this." Ember said, getting up from her seat.

She could see that Caleb didn't understand any of it as she moved him to sit down in the seat she just vacated.

"I'm sorry." Ember said as she clicked play.

Ember knew that she probably had to leave the room to let Caleb watch the video alone, but she didn't want to leave him on his own now that he was going to witness something that was going to turn his whole world upside down.

The video flickered into life and Laura Gant's face appeared on the screen, she was looking sad, clearly knowing that her time was about to run out.

"Caleb darling." Laura said. "It's me... your mother."

Ember closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that the damage was done and that it was going to be irreparable. When she opened them again, she saw that Caleb was staring at the screen of the computer in stunned silence.

"If you can hear this, you've woken up, you're alive." Laura continued. "What your world is like, I've no way of knowing. I just pray it's better than the one I've left you in. I don't have long, so please listen carefully."

Ember reached out and put her hand on Caleb's shoulder when she saw the tear that was making its way down his face, not knowing what to say or to do to make things easier for him.

"Your father and I, we... we had to cryogenically freeze you." Laura went on, unaware how it was going to affect her son when he watched the message. "You were very sick. I've no way of knowing when in time you'll wake up, I don't know either if you will have recovered, or how the suspended animation will have affected you. We tried to help you out with cybernetic implants, but only time will tell if over the years they've worked. My world, the world of 2068, is facing disaster. The Roboidz have rebelled, we're in great danger. But you should be safe, at least for a while in FutureGate's most secure lab. Caleb, you are our only hope for the future. If we never meet again, know that I love you and that I believe in you. Stay strong."

With that the message ended and Ember felt that it was the longest 1 minute and 34 seconds in her life. She couldn't even begin to imagine what it must've been like for Caleb.

"Caleb?" Ember whispered, afraid to raise her voice.

"I..." Caleb stammered as he stared at the frozen image of his mother on the screen. "I can't believe this... Laura... is my mother? Laura Gant? Who created the Roboidz? I don't understand... how can that be?"

"I'm sorry, Caleb." Ember said softly. "I wish it wasn't true..."

"No!" Caleb yelled, making Ember jumped. "It can't be true! She can't be my mother! She can't be!"

Ember couldn't help but step back in shock as she watched the change taking place in Caleb. She could see that he was getting angry... not just getting angry, he was getting really pissed off.

"Caleb, calm down..." Ember started to say.

"Calm down?" Caleb yelled. "My mum created the Roboidz! Why should I calm down!"

Caleb glanced at Ember maybe 2 seconds, but during those two seconds, she could see that his eyes only held rage. And that rage was making itself known. Ember jumped back when Caleb grabbed hold of the computer and tossed it across the room without any effort at all. Ember stared as it hit the wall and watched as the computer broke into pieces.

"Oh my god..." Ember whispered.

In the split second that Caleb had thrown the computer, Ember had become well aware of the kind of damage that his cybernetic arm could do. Caleb let out a scream of rage that scared Ember so badly that tears started to run down her face as he turned to one of the metal walls and punched right through it with his cybernetic hand. This was a true eye-opener to Ember, if Caleb could punch through a thick metal wall with his cybernetic arm without any effort at all, she didn't even want to consider the kind of damage that Caleb could do if he turned his anger on her.

The only thing that Ember could do as Caleb walked around the lair, smashing every single bit of technology that he could find was watch. She wanted to stop Caleb so badly, but she was afraid that if she tried, he was going to turn his anger on her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Caleb yelled as he walked over to Ember. "Why? You had no right to keep this from me!"

Ember yelled in shock as Caleb grabbed hold of her upper arms and gripped them tightly. So tightly in fact that it was starting to hurt. She could feel the pressure on her right arm building and she felt fear rising when she saw that that was the arm Caleb had clamped his cybernetic hand around.

"Why didn't you tell me!" Caleb demanded, his rage filled blue-green eyes boring into her own emerald green ones.

"Because I didn't want to see you get hurt!" Ember screamed, fresh tears falling down her face as she tried to pull her arms free. "Let go of me! You're hurting me!"

Caleb seemed to come to his senses, at least a little, when she yelled this and he let go of her. Seeing that Ember had been trying to pull back, she stumbled back when Caleb let go of her and ended up falling back against one of the walls. She let herself slip down to the ground in a sitting position, watching Caleb with wide eyes of fear. Ember cradled her right arm as it was hurting worse than the left one was as she stared at Caleb, afraid to see what he might do next.

Caleb was just standing there, staring back at Ember with wide tear filled eyes. It seemed like his muscles had locked into place as he stood completely still. They must've stood there looking at each other for at least 5 minutes, neither of them moving a muscle. Caleb ended up being the first to move and Ember couldn't help but flinch at this. Caleb didn't make a move towards her however, instead he ran out of the lair.

Ember listened to his footsteps as they died away in the distance and she allowed herself to relax, if only a tiny bit. She didn't know what to do, her first instinct would've been to go after Caleb and make sure he wouldn't do anything stupid, but seeing as she didn't know what he was going to do, not to mention that he had just hurt her, she was afraid to go over him. For the first time since getting to FutureGate, Ember was at a complete and total loss of what to do.

**So, that's it for Chapter 11.**

**Let me know what you think about it!:D**

**the next chapter will probably be up on Sunday, Monday at the latest.**

**~ Abby**


	12. Chapter 12

**Hello!**

**Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed!**

**Here's chapter 12:D**

Chapter 12: Apologies.

A half hour after Caleb had left; Ember was still sitting in the same spot, not having moved a single muscle. She also couldn't stop staring at the door. For some reason, she was scared that Caleb was going to come back and take his anger out on her again. Another 15 minutes later, Ember decided that it was time to stop being afraid and go find her friend to make sure that he hadn't done something stupid to himself.

She pushed herself to her feet and grimaced a little as she felt her right arm aching. Ember decided to check the damage later and she took a few painkillers before leaving the lair. Seeing as the computer had been shattered and looked beyond repair, well, it could be repaired, but that was going to take more time than Ember was willing to spent on it, she decided to make her way to the medical bay. There was a computer that she could probably fix and hack into in a matter of minutes.

Ember suspected that the place where Caleb would've gone was the place where his fight against the Roboidz started, namely FutureGate's most secure lab according to Laura Gant, the place where the cryo freezing had taken place. If it turned out that Caleb wasn't there at all, Ember decided to go and seek out Cybele to find out what Caleb's favourite spot was when he was upset or angry or to find out whether she had some kind of sensor that would track Caleb's position on the ship or something like that.

10 minutes later, Ember limped into the medical bay and she went over to the computer in the corner. She opened up the panel that would allow her to look into the system and found that there was nothing wrong with the computer so she turned on it on. She allowed herself a small smile when she saw that the computer was still in proper working order, so she started hacking into the mainframe. After getting access to it, she called up a few digital blueprints which had been buried so deep in the system that it had taken her over 10 minutes to dig them out.

"Jackpot..." Ember whispered to herself although it lacked any enthusiasm.

Ember saw that on the way she would come across a storage room for food, so she thought that she'd go and have a look to see if she could find some stuff as a tension breaker. Ember grabbed an empty bag that had once contained a first aid kit and jotted down the route on the back of an old medical chart. As she stepped out of the medical bay, she started to make her way towards the cryo freezing lab.

When she was three quarters of the way there, Ember stopped at the storage room. After a few moments of forcing the door open as the hinges had rusted over the years, she was able to step into the room and she flicked on the lights. The room was a little chilly as she entered it, but it was probably to stop the food from decaying too fast. She looked around for a few moments and saw that the room was still fully stocked, and of course everything had been vacuum packed. After a few moments, Ember came to the conclusion that Caleb probably hadn't found the place before.

It looked like the room had been divided in different sections like fruit, candy, dinner, breakfast, lunch and drinks. Ember walked over to the fruit section and looked around for a moment before grabbing a few vacuum packed bananas which she slipped into the shoulder bag. Ember decided that she might as well take some other stuff with her seeing that the few supplies that Caleb had brought with him the first night that Ember had arrived on FutureGate were running out. When the bag was full, Ember left the storage room and continued down to the cryo freezing lab.

When Ember got there, she felt herself starting to get a little scared again. A million thoughts were running through her head and all of them pointing to the same question, what was Caleb going to do when he saw her? In the end she pushed the thoughts and the fear away to the back of her mind and decided to scope out the situation first and deal with it later. The door of the lab was open at a crack and from the other side of it; she could hear the sounds of someone crying. Ember hesitated a little, not sure whether she should go inside or not. In the end, Ember decided that Caleb shouldn't have to be alone at that moment, seeing that the image he had of his mother had probably been completely shattered.

When she pushed the door open, she was a little surprised when she found that the door didn't take that much effort to push open or made any noise, seeing that all the other doors on FutureGate did. She stepped into the room to find that there was just one single machine in the room that took up the most space along with some medical equipment. Ember shivered a little when she saw that the machine looked like an oversized coffin. She couldn't imagine what it must've been like for Caleb to wake up inside that thing and not knowing what year it was, or even who he was.

Caleb was sitting against the cryo freezing machine, his knees were pulled up against his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs and his face was buried against his knees. His whole posture was screaming defeat and Ember forgot completely about her fear as it was replaced by sympathy and sadness. she hated seeing her friend in this state. She limped over to Caleb and put the bag down on the ground without saying anything and kneeled down beside Caleb.

"Go away." Caleb's muffled voice said.

"You don't have to go through this alone, you know." Ember replied as she wrapped an arm around Caleb's shoulders. "It's okay to cry in front of others, especially after... well, the point is that I want to help you, Caleb."

"Why would you?" Caleb asked. "I hurt you... why would you even trust me?"

"Because you're my friend." Ember replied. "And friends forgive each other, more importantly; they helped each other if one of them needs help."

Ember watched as Caleb slowly raised his head. She had meant what she had said, she did forgive him. As she had left the storage room, she felt angry about the fact that Caleb had hurt her, but now she'd seen the state that Caleb was in she didn't have the heart to stay angry at him. Not after she considered what he'd gone through in the past hour and a half. Ember watched as Caleb just stared at her, clearly not knowing what to say to this, so Ember took the initiative and wrapped her arms around Caleb, pulling him into a hug.

As soon as she did this, she felt Caleb wrapping his arms around her, although he seemed to be doing it really carefully and he lowered his head against her shoulder. Ember could feel his shoulders starting to shake as clearly a new wave of tears started.

"It's okay." Ember whispered soothingly as she rubbed Caleb's back in an attempt to comfort him. "I'm here. I forgive you."

Ember didn't know how long the two of them sat there, but after a while, Caleb's shoulders stopped shaking. Ember kept silent, deciding that it was better for Caleb to start talking but after a half hour or so, Ember felt that the silence was starting to get unbearable.

"I'm sorry for not telling you before, Caleb." Ember said quietly. "I didn't know what you were going to do and I didn't want you to get hurt in case you were going to do something rash."

"Thank you." Caleb replied as he pulled back.

Ember had to hide a grimace when she saw how bloodshot his eyes were, she knew from experience that his eyes were probably going to be burning for a few hours.

"But I should be the one saying sorry." he continued.

"No you don't, you had…" Ember started only for Caleb to shake his head at her.

"I didn't have the right to hurt you." He stated. "So I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Ember smiled a little as she gently brushed the tears from Caleb's face. "I barely feel it anymore."

It was actually a little white lie. Her arm was still hurting despite the painkillers that she'd taken but Ember didn't want Caleb to feel worse than he already did, hence the lie.

"Are you sure?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah I'm sure." Ember nodded, smiling a little. "Hey, I managed to find a storage room on my way over here; I figured I'd scavenge some stuff from it."

She reached over to the bag with food and reached into it only to pull out an orange. She glared at the orange for a moment, wondering why she hadn't pulled out a banana instead and seeing that Caleb had already seen the fruit she couldn't push it back into the bag.

"What's that?" Caleb asked as Ember pulled the packet open.

"It's an orange." Ember replied, handing the fruit over to him. "It's a fruit."

Before Ember could stop him, Caleb had taken a bite out of the orange, peel and all. She grimaced as Caleb chewed a few times before spitting the piece of orange out.

"That's horrible!" Caleb complained, tossing the orange across the room, which just bounced back. "Who would eat something like that? Oranges are evil!"

"You're supposed to peel it first." Ember said, picking up the orange from the ground where it had stopped. "See?"

Ember peeled a part of the orange and pulled out a chunk which she held out to Caleb. Caleb just eyed the piece suspiciously and Ember smiled a little before eating it herself.

"Maybe this will get rid of the taste." Ember remarked after swallowing.

She reached into the bag and pulled out a banana, which Caleb practically snatched out of her hands with a beaming grin.

"Brilliant!" he exclaimed as he practically tore the packaging open.

Ember couldn't help herself when she laughed while she watched Caleb eating the banana. When she had arrived on FutureGate, she wouldn't have expected Caleb to be a banana junkie, but she had to admit that it was really funny to watch.

"Well no need to thank me or anything." Ember teased as Caleb finished the banana.

"Thank you." Caleb grinned before grabbing Ember into a hug which made her laugh.

"You're welcome." Ember replied.

To tell the truth, Ember was actually really relieved that her little tactic had worked, if it hadn't, she didn't know what she would've done to get Caleb to cheer up.

"How did you find me?" Caleb asked.

"Dumb luck I guess." Ember shrugged. "I just thought about where I'd go if I was in your shoes so I hacked into the computer in the medical bay to find some blueprints."

"That's pretty clever." Caleb remarked.

"It's not that clever, it's just dumb luck." Ember replied. "But what do you say we get out of here and get some fresh air? I think we've both had enough doom and gloom for one day."

"Yeah, you're right." Caleb agreed, getting to his feet. "We should be celebrating."

Ember smiled as she climbed to her feet and pulled the bag over her shoulder. The two of them left the cryo freezing lab and Caleb pushed the door closed behind them.

They walked over to the nearest door that lead outside. As they stepped outside, they found that it was warm outside, like a nice summer's day despite the wind that was blowing. Ember dropped the bag by the door before stepping out onto the deck. They were on the lower decks of FutureGate and the sun was beating down on it, but it wasn't uncomfortable in the slightest.

"This would be the perfect weather to do some sunbathing." Ember remarked.

"Sunbathing?" Caleb repeated.

"Yeah, you know, just lying down somewhere where the sun shines and soak up the sunlight." Ember replied. "It can be really relaxing, you've just got to make sure that you don't lie in the sun too long, or you'll get burns."

Caleb just gave Ember a look that screamed he thought she was mental as she pulled of her khaki vest and dropped it to the deck. Seeing that it was warm, Ember didn't see the point in wearing all the layers that you needed inside FutureGate to stay warm.

"What?" Ember asked as she tied the sleeves of the jumpsuit around her waist when she saw the look Caleb was giving her.

After Ember had pulled of the long sleeved top, she found that Caleb was staring at her right arm and she felt like hitting herself. Her arm was still hurting, but Ember had been ignoring it most of the time, so she didn't realize that pulling of the top layers of her outfit meant revealing the damage. She glanced down at her arm and her eyes widened.

Her left arm, which had been grabbed by Caleb's human hand, was a little bruised because of the tight grip he'd had on it, but her right arm was a different story. It was badly bruised seeing that it had been grabbed by Caleb's cybernetic hand, but there weren't just dark bruises. inside the bruises, the skin had been split open because of the pressure and they formed small cuts which had been bleeding. But seeing that Ember hadn't pay attention to it, the blood had dried, making it seem worse than it actually was.

Both Caleb and Ember just stared at her arm and Ember felt a wave of heat passing over her body as her breathing sped up and she knew only too well what that meant. She was starting to hyperventilate. She knew only full well what was causing it, it was at seeing the blood, but she had a feeling that the knowledge that Caleb could actually hurt a human really badly with his cybernetics when he wasn't in control of his emotions was playing a part in it too. Ember grabbed at her throat when she felt like it was being squeezed shut, like it always did when she was hyperventilating.

"Ember? What's wrong?" Caleb asked.

Ember shook her head, unable to say anything because of the hyperventilation. She felt her feet and hands starting to tingle and her knees started to feel week. She actually felt her knees giving out, but because she could fall, Caleb had grabbed hold of her.

"What's wrong?" Caleb asked as he helped Ember sit down. "Ember, talk to me."

Ember wanted to tell Caleb what was wrong, but because of the hyperventilation, she could barely get the words out. She felt tears starting to burn at the back of her eyes and she grabbed hold of Caleb's arms to reassure herself that she wasn't alone.

"Ember, it's okay." Caleb said. "Just breathe, alright? Try to copy me, okay?"

Ember watched as Caleb calmly started to breath in and out and gestured Ember to do the same. Ember tried to mimic the way that he was breathing although she couldn't in the first few minutes. Slowly but surely however, Ember's breathing started to become more and more normal until she had stopped hyperventilating and her breathing had completely returned to normal.

"You okay now?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah, just tired." Ember nodded.

She always had that problem after a hyperventilation attack, after it was over she felt exhausted due to the fact that it took a lot of energy for her body to regulate the temperature so it would return to its normal temperature.

"What was that?" Caleb asked.

"Hyperventilation attack." Ember replied. "Don't know what it's exactly, but it's something to do with the oxygen and the CO2 in your body not being at equal levels or something. It happened because of the blood... But I'm okay now... I just need some rest."

"Alright, let's go back to the lair." Caleb said.

Ember nodded and let Caleb pull her to her feet before she picked up the long sleeved shirt and pulled it on. After Ember had put on her khaki vest, the two of them walked back to the door and Caleb picked up the bag of food to carry before the two of them went back into FutureGate. A while later, they stepped into the lair and Caleb put the bag down on one of the tables.

"I'm going to lie down for a while." Ember said as she started to walk over to the sleeping quarters

"Not yet." Caleb replied.

"Why not?"Ember asked, turning to face him.

"I want to take care of your arm first." Caleb stated.

Ember didn't argue with this seeing how determined Caleb looked about it. She sat down on top of one of the workbenches and pulled of the khaki vest and long sleeved shirt while Caleb got some water and bandages. When Caleb had grabbed the stuff he needed, he sat down beside Ember and silently worked to clean the dried blood away before applying some disinfectant and bandaging her arm.

"I'm sorry." Caleb said as he started to bandage Ember's arm.

"It's okay." Ember replied.

"It's not." Caleb shook his head. "I didn't have the right to take my anger out on you. It's not your fault Laura's my mum."

"You did have the right to be angry with me." Ember argued. "I knew the truth and I kept it from you."

"True, but you did it to protect me." Caleb pointed out. "You said so yourself. Besides, even if I did have the right to be angry, I didn't have the right to hurt you."

"It's not like you did it on purpose, Caleb." Ember stated as Caleb tied the bandage off. "I'm not mad at you or anything."

"Well I am." Caleb replied quietly. "At myself I mean."

Ember sighed as she reached out to hug Caleb, but he pulled back and got up from his seat.

"You should probably go get some rest if you're tired." Caleb said.

Ember just nodded silently and got up from the table; she silently walked into the sleeping quarters and walked over to her bed space.

After lying down, she glanced at her bandaged arm and found that Caleb had actually done a pretty good job, but the thing was that bothering her was that Caleb seemed to be feeling extremely guilty about the fact that he had accidentally hurt her, even though Ember wasn't mad at him and he had apologized. More importantly, Ember hoped that Caleb wasn't going to hate himself, in particular his cybernetics, even more because of this. With that thought lingering in the back of her mind, Ember fell asleep.

**So this is it for chapter 12, hope you enjoyed it:D**

**The next one should be up on either Wednesday or Thursday.**

**~ Abby**


	13. Chapter 13

**Hiya!**

**Thanks to everyone whose read and/or reviewed:D  
here's Chapter 13, hope you enjoy it!**

Chapter 13: Eclipse, Jupiter, Moon

Ember woke up maybe an hour later and she felt rested enough to get to out of bed. She glanced over to her long-sleeved shirt, where it was lying on the floor beside her, to find that the right sleeve was a bit bloody and she didn't fancy putting that on again. Ember limped out into the main room of the lair to find that Caleb wasn't there. She sighed as she went over to the storage room and started digging through the boxes for a clean shirt. After a while she managed to find one, but it turned out to be a man's shirt, not that Ember cared, she was used to wearing men's clothes, having stolen her brother's warm hoodies on more than one occasion on cold winter days.

After pulling on the shirt, Ember walked out into the main room and saw that Caleb was back and he was reading through a couple of papers he was holding as he sat down at one of the workbenches.

"Hey." Ember said as she walked over to him.

"Oh hey Ember." Caleb replied, putting the papers away. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay now." Ember replied. "What about you? Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah, fine." Caleb nodded.

"By the way, I took a clean shirt from the boxes in the storage room, hope you don't mind." Ember remarked.

"No, it's fine." Caleb replied.

Ember nodded slowly and frowned a little when she felt that Caleb was acting a little bit off. He wasn't being himself at all; it almost felt like that he was hiding something. Ember shrugged the thoughts off as she reached into the food bag and pulled out an apple from it.

"So where were you?" Ember asked after taking a bite from the apple.

"Medical lab." Caleb replied. "Had to look something up in the mainframe."

"Alright, find what you were looking for?" Ember asked.

"Yeah." Caleb replied absently before sighing deeply. "Ember, I think it's time for you to go home."

"What?" Ember asked, being caught completely off guard. "Go home? But... I don't understand... why?"

"Neuros and Arkon are defeated, there's no point in you staying." Caleb replied.

"But... what about the clean up?" Ember asked. "Are you going to collect all the Bio-Rods and stuff yourself?"

"Yes." Caleb replied. "It's not like they're going to power up again."

"So that's it then?" Ember asked, starting to get angry. "I help you defeat Neuros and Arkon and you send me home? Just like that?"

"You knew that was going to happen when you got here." Caleb shrugged.

"I can't believe this." Ember shook her head. "After everything we've gone through, you're just going to send me home like this?"

"You could call it that." Caleb replied.

"This isn't fair." Ember stated as Caleb looked away from her when she pointed at him. "You're not being fair. You can't possibly expect that you can rebuild the world on your own! You need help for that!"

"I'll manage." Caleb replied.

"No you won't." Ember stated. "Is this really what you want? Do you really want to be alone again?"

"Ember, you've got family in 2010." Caleb stated. "You have to go home. They're going to be worried about you."

"So?" Ember asked. "You managed to contact people in 2010; I can send them a message, tell them that I've gone abroad or something like that."

"No." Caleb shook his head.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ember asked. "No?"

"The transmitter is broken." Caleb replied. "It's impossible to get any messages to 2010."

"Then we'll just have to fix it." Ember replied. "Where is it?"

"No, Ember." Caleb shook his head. "You're going home, today."

"What the hell happened to you?" Ember asked. "Why this sudden turn around? Is this because you accidently hurt me? I already told you that it's okay."

"This isn't about that, Ember." Caleb said firmly. "You're going home, and that's final."

"Says who?" Ember challenged, putting her hands on her hips.

"Me." Caleb replied.

"Well, mister 'look at me, I'm the leader of the resistance, aren't I awesome?'." Ember said sarcastically in anger. "I'm not going back. You can't make me."

"Give me one reason why you would want to stay?" Caleb asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

Ember stared at Caleb for a moment, caught off guard again by the question. Why did she want to stay? It wasn't like this was the perfect world, it was the opposite, the world of 2110 was a complete and total mess, there was a lot to be done in the terms of rebuilding and it was going to take a lot of time. It certainly wasn't because of the fact that she was getting feelings for Caleb, because she wasn't, not more than friendship at any rate. But then she realized why Caleb probably wanted Ember to leave, why would he go digging around in the mainframe? It wasn't like he would find more information about anything that was in the Cycon Archive, it would take more than just putting in a few codes. It would take some serious hacking and judging from what she'd seen, Caleb lacked the skills to properly hack into computers as he had asked her to do that each time something needed hacking into.

"What did you go looking for in the mainframe?" Ember asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

"What?" Caleb replied, his eyes widening slightly as if he hadn't been expecting that response.

"What did you go looking for in the mainframe?" Ember repeated. "It must've been something big for you to start ordering me to go home."

"It was nothing." Caleb replied.

"You're lying." Ember stated, her eyes narrowing even further. "You wouldn't try and make me go home if it was nothing."

Ember watched as Caleb looked away from her and that was enough of an explanation for her.

"Don't lie to me, Caleb." Ember stated angrily. "If there's one sure way to get me angry it's lying to me. So either you tell me the truth right now, or I'll just head down to the medical bay and find out what you've been looking up myself. It's your choice."

Ember crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Caleb, wondering what he was going to do. Caleb just stared back at Ember, clearly debating with himself what he was going to say.

"Well?" Ember pressed. "What's it going to be?"

"I can't tell you." Caleb replied.

"Fine." Ember replied.

Ember limped over to the door of the lair only for Caleb to step into the way and push the door closed in front of her.

"Get out of my way." Ember said firmly.

"Ember, you don't understand." Caleb said.

"You're right." Ember replied. "I don't understand. So get out of my way so I can find answers to what I don't understand."

Ember pushed Caleb aside, feeling determined to get the answers she wanted before pulling the door open.

"Ember, listen to me." Caleb said, grabbing hold of her arm. "You're making a mistake. Trust me; you don't want to go looking for answers."

"I could've stopped you from finding out your heritage." Ember replied coldly as she pulled her arm free. "I knew that it was going to hurt if you found out who your mother was, but I made sure you found out anyway because you had the right to know and now you're trying to stop me find some answers of my own. Tell me, Caleb, do you think that's fair? Because I don't."

With that, Ember left the lair. She had expected Caleb to come after her to stop her, but he didn't. She didn't look back to see what Caleb was doing, instead she held her head high and her eyes in front of her as she started making her way to the medical bay.

When she got there some time later, she went straight over to the computer and turned it on. She pulled over a chair from one of the workbenches and sat down behind the computer. Ember started to type and 15 minutes later, she had found out what Caleb had been looking for. It had been the personnel files of the people who had been working inside FutureGate. He had been particularly interested in the file of Laura Gant, his mother. Laura's file didn't contain anything that could've been of interest of Caleb, other than that it listed his father, a man called Simeon Lansing. When Ember called up the file on Simeon, she felt her eyes widening. On the personnel files, the parents of the person in question were also listed. The parents listed for Simeon Lansing were a man called Rutger Lansing and Ember Lansing-Tennant.

"Oh my god..." Ember whispered. "Oh my... oh god... this... I... I have a son in 2011? Oh my god!"

After thinking about having a son for a few moments, another thought entered her mind.

"Bloody hell!" Ember exclaimed. "Caleb's my grandson? What the hell?"

It took a while for Ember to calm down after realizing that Caleb was actually her grandson. When the thought had been processed and dealt with, and with dealt with meaning that Ember had tossed an empty glass jar against the wall to release the pent up energy at the shock of finding out that Caleb was her grandson. Once Ember had calmed down enough she went back to the computer to continue looking through the mainframe.

In the end, she found out that Laura had been keeping a digital diary and it described how she had met Simeon. After some more researching, Ember found out about Simeon's history. Simeon had been born on the 26th of January in the year 2011; almost a year after Ember and Rutger Lansing had met. When Simeon had been 19, he had been hired by Cycon Research for an internship and somehow, he and Laura, who had been 27 at the time, had fallen in love. The result of their love was Caleb, who had been born on the 27th of May in 2030.

"Bloody hell..." Ember whispered, leaning back in her seat.

She ran a hand through her hair as she processed all the information she'd just read and just as she was about to log of the computer, a new window opened and it showed that there was a video message waiting for her. Ember frowned a little before hitting play and when she did, Ember almost screamed in shock when she saw who appeared on the screen. She was looking at herself, well an older version of herself seeing that she was getting a little gray and had a few wrinkles, but she was definitely looking at herself.

"Hello Ember." She said. "It's me, well, actually it's an older version of you, but you get my point. By now you'll have probably discovered your connection to Caleb. Everything you read is the truth, Caleb is your grandson."

Ember gaped at the screen, unable to believe that she was actually looking at an older version of herself, not to mention that her older version had just confirmed that Caleb was her grandson.

"Oh my god." Ember muttered.

"If I remember right, we… I mean, you are freaking out right now." Future Ember continued. "It's natural to do so, but try to relax for a few moments and listen to me. You were pretty angry at Caleb when you left to find out what he discovered, but it wasn't his fault, he was trying to protect you. I know it sounds strange, but he thought that you were going to do something stupid if you found out the truth, just like you thought he'd do something rash if you told him about Laura, so don't take it out on him. There's something else you should know, remember when you found the EJM code in the Cycon Archive? You freaked out because of the similarity because of Bryce's, Tommy's and your hacker names. The truth is, you weren't wrong. Simeon, our son made up that code in honour of the three of you. The three of you will go on to make your own hacker's community after Spider's Bite disbands, it will grow out to be the biggest community in the UK."

Ember raised an eyebrow at this explanation. She thought that there was going to be something sinister behind the EJM code. To be honest, she was feeling a little disappointed to find out that it was simply because of the fact that she, Bryce and Tommy went on to make a hacker's community of their own.

"Ember, what I'm about to tell you is really important, so listen very carefully." Future Ember continued. "In 4 days time, Caleb will send you home. When you do get home, everyone will freak and ask you what happened to you. You can't tell anyone anything about what happened to you. It's going to be very hard not to tell anyone what happened, but you can't tell a single soul, not Rutger when you meet him, not when Simeon meets Laura, no-one can find out the truth. I know that right now you're thinking of stopping the future from playing out like it is now, but you have to let it play out. If it doesn't, Caleb will never be born and Earth will be ruled by the Roboidz."

With that the message stopped and Ember was still gaping at the screen.

"Bloody hell..." Ember whispered.

She leaned back against the seat and ran her hands through her hair. After thinking for a few moments, she logged of the computer and slowly started limping back to the lair. Now that she knew what Caleb had been hiding, she felt bad for getting angry at him.

When she got back to the lair, she found that Caleb was again tinkering with the PDA like device again. Ember put her hands in the pockets of her jumpsuit and slowly walked over to Caleb.

"Hey..." Ember said, feeling awkward.

"Hey." Caleb replied without looking up.

"Caleb, I'm sorry for getting angry." Ember said. "I shouldn't have gotten mad... I just... I just didn't understand why you wouldn't tell me what you found out..."

"Well, clearly you did find out." Caleb stated without looking up, sounding angry. "So, was it what you had expected?"

"No." Ember replied. "It wasn't... I kind of wished that I hadn't found out..."

"Too late for that now." Caleb stated coldly. "Leave me alone, alright? I need to think."

Ember lowered her head a little, knowing she had that response coming after the way she'd behaved. She didn't know what else to say, so she decided that the best thing to do was to give Caleb the space he needed for now.

"I'll be out on the deck if you need me..." Ember said quietly before leaving the lair again.

As Ember limped towards the door that lead to the outer decks, she knew that she had screwed up majorly. She just hoped that somehow she could put things right between her and Caleb.

**So, that's it for Chapter 13. **

**Hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know what you think:D**

**~ Abby**


	14. Chapter 14

**Hiya!**

**Thanks so much to everyone whose reviewed! I'm really pleased you all liked the twist in the last chapter!:D *Hugs you all***

**Here's Chapter 14:D**

Chapter 14: Remnants

When Ember stepped out onto the deck, the wind was blowing hard and it almost seemed like the weather was trying to mimic the way that Ember was feeling. She walked around the small building that formed the entrance into FutureGate until she was on the opposite side from where the door was and sat down against the wall, looking out over the waters. Now that Ember was alone, she started to process all the information that she'd been given in the past hour. She still couldn't believe that she was actually Caleb's grandmother. That was a turn of events that she hadn't seen coming at all.

But she couldn't help but hate the fact that Caleb was her grandson, it wasn't because of the fact that he had fought the Roboidz for 5 years on end on his own, she was bloody proud of that fact. The fact that she hated it was because she now knew what Caleb had gone through. When Ember thought about her possible children and grandchildren, she had always thought about them as happy and carefree. Caleb's life after waking up from being cytogenetically frozen was anything but happy and carefree. She didn't know the full details of everything that had happened, but as far as she was concerned, it must've been hell for Caleb. To have woken up from cryo sleep on his own and not knowing who he was or who his family had been.

Ember leaned back against the wall and pulled her knees to her chest. She felt awful now she knew what her part in the future of humanity was going to be. This was probably what people meant by not knowing future events was probably for the best. She wanted nothing more than to make sure that she'd never get pregnant with Simeon, but if she did that, it would mean that Caleb would never be born, which also meant that the Roboidz would rule Earth, just like her future self had told her. As Ember thought about it, she doubted that the creation of the Roboidz could've been avoided. To her it almost seemed like the plot from the Terminator movies, no matter what you did, you can't change a fixed point in time.

When Ember felt the first tear sliding down her cheek, she buried her face against her knees and silently started to cry. she wished that she hadn't been so stubborn about wanting to find out what Caleb had been hiding from her when he tried to make her go home. Now she understood why he had tried that, it was to make sure that, in his point of view, history would play out like it was supposed to. He had been trying to ensure his own survival. In hindsight, Ember couldn't blame him for that at all, she would've done the same thing if she was in his shoes and that just made her feel even worse. She wished that she could take all of it back, but now it was too late for that.

Ember wrapped her arms around the legs and cried against her knees. How long she cried, she didn't know, but she forced herself to stop when she heard footsteps approaching. Seeing that there was only one other person on FutureGate, she didn't have to look to know it was Caleb who was coming towards her and the last thing she wanted was Caleb knowing she had been crying. He was going to find out at some point though, it was inevitable, but Ember wanted to delay that for as long as she could so she could compose herself at least a little.

"Hey Ember." Caleb said as he sat down beside her.

"Hey." She replied, although her voice was muffled by her knees.

"Its okay you got mad you know." Caleb remarked.

"No it's not." Ember replied. "I shouldn't have been so stubborn..."

Ember climbed to her feet without looking at Caleb and walked over to the railing of the deck. She leaned her hands on them before lowering her head as she felt a wave of fresh tears was over her. She didn't even realize that Caleb had walked up behind her until she felt his hand on her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Caleb asked as Ember turned her head away from him.

"Nothing." Ember lied.

"Really?" Caleb asked. "I don't believe you."

"I'm fine." Ember said before sniffing. "Couldn't be any better."

"Something tells me you're not alright." Caleb remarked.

Ember tried to turn away when Caleb took hold of her arm but before she could, Caleb had turned her to face him.

"What's wrong?" Caleb asked, trying to make eye contact which Ember avoided.

Ember didn't reply, instead she kept staring at the water. By the sounds of things, Caleb wasn't mad at her anymore, for which she was glad, but she couldn't bring herself to talk about what was worrying her. It was just something she always did, when something was bothering her, she'd just shut down and pretend nothing happened. She listened to Caleb sigh and the next thing she knew, he had pulled her into a hug. Ember hugged him back as she felt a sob building in her throat and before she could stop it, it had escaped her.

"It's okay." Caleb whispered. "I'm here."

Even though she was crying, Ember couldn't help but smile just a little when she realized that Caleb was literally copying what she'd done when he had been crying in the Cryo freezing lab. She felt Caleb rubbing her back and she genuinely felt comforted by it.

"Ember, what's wrong?" Caleb asked.

"Everything." Ember whispered. "It's just... Finding out what my part is going to be in the future... Knowing that I'm going to be your grandmother... It's just that everything that's happened the past few days is just getting to me..."

"It could be worse." Caleb remarked.

"How?" Ember asked.

"We could..." Caleb started. "Run out of bananas!"

Ember pulled away and stared at Caleb to find that he was being serious about what he'd said, which lead her to giving him an expression that screamed she thought he was insane.

"Seriously?" Ember asked, smiling a little. "That's what you come up with?"

"What?" Caleb replied, shrugging a little. "Running out of bananas is a disaster! They're a good source of potassium!"

"You only know that because I told you." Ember laughed, lightly hitting Caleb on the arm.

"So?" Caleb replied. "Doesn't mean it's not true."

"Alright, you've got me there." Ember laughed. "Seriously, sometimes I think you've got a banana for a brain seeing how obsessed you are with them."

"Yeah?" Caleb asked, looking mock offended. "Well you're... You're... Short! Granny!"

"Oi, never heard of respecting your elders?" Ember asked, crossing her arms over her chest in mock offence.

"You're not older than me." Caleb stated.

"Actually, I am." Ember grinned. "At least a 100 years older than you are. So respect your elders, young man."

Caleb stared at Ember for a few moments, trying to look outraged, but in the end, the laughter won out. It didn't take that long for Ember to join in and when the two of them had finished, she realized that things didn't look all that bad anymore. It looked like that laughter really was the best cure for anything.

"Thank you." Ember said when the two of them stopped laughing. "I needed that."

"You're welcome." Caleb grinned.

"I really am sorry you know." Ember remarked. "I shouldn't have been so stubborn."

"It's okay." Caleb shrugged. "I guess you could say it runs in the family."

Ember grinned back as she wiped the tears from her face.

"Yeah, you could say that." She agreed. "So what are we going to do? I've got a few days before I have to go home."

"Well, how about we got exploring the lower decks?" Caleb suggested. "I've never been there."

"Fine with me." Ember replied.

Caleb grinned before he grabbed Ember's hand and pulled her towards the door. The two of them went into FutureGate and Caleb lead the way to the lower decks. It was evident that they were beneath sea level as the lower they got, the more damp things got.

"If any more water gets into this place you're going to have a private pool." Ember remarked.

"I know." Caleb remarked. "I should really get some welding in when I've got the time."

"Actually, you do have time." Ember remarked. "You're not fighting the Roboidz anymore, which means you've got all the time in the world."

"Oh yeah." Caleb grinned.

Ember shook her head as they walked through an ankle high pool. She was glad that the shoes she was wearing were water tight, otherwise her feet would've been freezing by now. Although in the end that didn't really matter, as by the time they stepped out of the pool of water, Ember's toes felt like they were freezing off.

"What do you think went on here?" Ember asked as they got to a room that looked a little like something from a horror movie.

"I don't think I want to know." Caleb remarked, grabbing hold of Ember's hand. "Come on."

Ember shuddered a little as they moved on from the room. She really didn't want to know what else had gone on inside FutureGate, but it was clear that it wasn't something that was done with good intentions. The further that Caleb and Ember went into the bowels of FutureGate, the scarier things got.

They had ended up in a room where it looked like experiments had been done on people. There were tables with restraints spread around the room as well as all kinds of medical equipment. Caleb kept standing close to the door, as if he was expecting trouble while Ember slowly examined the rom.

"We probably should get out of here." Caleb remarked. "I got a bad feeling about this place."

"Just a few more minutes." Ember replied.

For some reason, the room had intrigued her, no matter how gruesome it looked. Her attention was drawn to a large cabinet and she got curious to see what was inside it. She walked over to it and reached for the handle of it. And as soon as she pushed the handle down, the cabinet fell open. When Ember caught a flash of an iron mask and two red eyes, she screamed before jumping back.

"Ember!" Caleb yelled as she tripped over her own feet as she tried to jump back.

All Ember could see was the Shade coming towards her as it fell forwards. The second that she hit the ground after tripping, she rolled away to avoid the Shade falling on top of her. The second that the Shade had dropped, Ember jumped when she felt Caleb helping her to her feet and the two of them looked down at the Shade that had fallen out of the cabinet.

"Why was that thing in there?" Ember asked, feeling herself shaking slightly because of the shock.

"I don't know." Caleb replied. "Are you okay?"

"Just a little shaky." Ember replied.

She stepped past the Shade and looked into the cabinet to find that it was filled with bottles. It was a miracle the Shade had fitted in with the bottles seeing how full it was. Ember reached out and grabbed one of the bottles before reading the label.

"Sulphuric acid?" Ember read out before grabbing a few other bottles. "Nitric acid, lactic acid, oxalic acid? What the hell would Roboidz want with these kinds of acid?"

"Acid?" Caleb repeated taking one of the bottles from Ember's hand and reading the label.

"Yeah..." Ember replied, showing the bottles to Caleb. "You know, I just had a horrible thought... What if this place is where the Roboidz experimented on humans to find out how to make a Shade?"

"You're right, that's horrible." Caleb grimaced. "Let's get out of here."

Ember nodded and put the bottles back into the cabinet. They went back to the door and left the room. Ember was still shivering when they walked down the corridors as they went deeper into FutureGate. The thought that the Roboidz had been experimenting on humans was just terrible, not to mention that it made her feel sick.

The next room that Caleb and Ember stepped into what looked like another experimenting room, but this one was different. For a start it had a computer in it. Despite the fact that Ember was feeling sick, her fingers started itching to hack into the computer and found out what had been going on in the lower levels.

"What do you think?" Ember asked. "Should we find out what's been going on here?"

"Yes." Caleb replied.

Ember nodded and walked over to the computer console. Seeing that it was still turned on after all that time, which was a miracle in itself, she started typing.

"When are you going to teach me how to do that?" Caleb asked.

"It's not something you can learn in a matter of hours." Ember smiled. "But I'll teach you a few tricks sometime."

Caleb nodded and Ember turned back to the screen, a few minutes later, she had found what she'd been looking for.

"We thought right." Ember remarked. "This place was used as an experimenting facility."

"Disgusting." Caleb shook his head.

"I know." Ember replied. "Can we get out of here now? This place is giving me the creeps."

"You and me both." Caleb replied.

Caleb and Ember left the room and started to walk back the way they came. When they reached the halfway mark, they ended up taking a wrong turn somewhere and stepped into a room of which the door slammed shut behind them the second they set foot over the threshold.

"What?" Caleb asked, looking back at the door. "What did it do that for?"

"How should I know?" Ember replied. "There's got to be some kind of release switch or something."

She looked over to the wall beside the door when they heard the sound. It was the sound of a thumping footstep, a sound that both Caleb and Ember knew only all too well. They exchanged a look before turning around only to see that two Roboidz were walking towards them. The weird thing was that these Roboidz were black instead of any of the usual colours, or even blue like Arkon had been.

"Oh no..." Ember whispered.

"No, they should be deactivated." Caleb stated a tremor of dread audible in his voice.

Ember had half expected that these Roboidz would raise their arms and fire their vector beams, but on closer inspection, she found that these Roboidz didn't have weapons, just two metallic hands. Ember pushed herself back against the door as the Roboidz kept coming closer.

"What do we do?" Ember asked.

"You go left." Caleb replied. "On my signal."

Ember glanced over at Caleb for a moment to find that he was looking determined about fighting the Roboidz before she tightened her muscles, ready to spring into action when she was given the order. She wondered how long Caleb was going to wait with giving the signal as the Roboidz were getting closer and closer.

"Now!" Caleb yelled when the two Roboidz were an arm's length away.

Even before Caleb had finished the word, Ember dived left into a roll past the left Roboid. She jumped to her feet and ran over to the other side of the room to join Caleb.

"What the hell do we do?" she asked.

"I don't know." Caleb replied.

"You don't have a plan?" Ember asked as the Roboidz turned to face them. "Are you kidding me?"

"No, I'm not." Caleb replied. "Saw their backs? They don't have any Bio-Rods."

"They must have some kind of different power source." Ember stated.

"Yeah, if we can find it, we can beat these kettle-heads." Caleb agreed.

"Alright, you look for it, I'll distract them." Ember said.

"Are you mad?" Caleb asked.

"Just a little." Ember replied, quietly dreading the thought to take on two Roboidz, but also being determined to keep Caleb from harm. "Besides, you're the expert when it comes to deactivating these over grown dust bins. You've got the best shot at this."

Seeing as the two Roboidz seemed to focus separately on Caleb and Ember, Ember grabbed a set of pliers from her vest and tossed them at the Roboid that was focusing on Caleb with all her strength.

"Ember, no." Caleb warned.

The warning had come too late though, the damage was already done as the pliers hit the Roboid and it turned to focus on Ember as well.

"Too late." Ember remarked as the two Roboidz started coming towards her.

Caleb didn't have a chance to say anything as Ember was already running to the right side of the room to draw the Roboidz away from Caleb. She glanced past the Roboidz to find that Caleb was looking around frantically for the power source, but it didn't look like he was having any luck.

"Use the computer." Ember yelled. "Get into the mainframe and call up the command screen."

"What good will that do?" Caleb asked.

"It can help us track the power source."Ember replied as she ducked out of the way from one of the Roboidz trying to grab hold of her.

Ember glanced over as Caleb ran over to the computer and started typing. All she had to do was keeping the Roboidz' attention of Caleb and on her, but distracting two Roboidz wasn't easy at all. In fact, it was bloody hard, how Caleb had managed to keep at least ten of them distracted when they went to get rid of Neuros, Ember didn't know, but she would've loved some pointers at that moment. She dove once again past one of the Roboidz' arms and grimaced when she felt the burn on her leg hurting as she jumped back to her feet.

"What do I do now?" Caleb yelled.

"Enter command code, track power source Roboid." Ember replied before diving past the two Roboidz again.

She could hear the keys of the keyboard clicking as Ember got to her feet and just as she was about to run, she felt one of the Roboidz' hands closing around her upper arm. The hand clamped down in a vice like grip and Ember yelled in pain, seeing as it had grabbed hold of her right upper arm.

For a few moments, Ember felt sure that she was done for when she saw the Roboidz' other arm coming towards her, but instead it grabbed hold of her other arm before lifting her of her feet.

"Get your hands of me, you bloody rust bucket!" Ember yelled, trying to struggle free. "Get the hell off!"

"Ember!" Caleb yelled. "It's going to be okay."

"Get out of there!" Ember yelled as the other Roboid started to head towards him. "Caleb, get out of here! Run!"

Ember kept struggling as the Roboid walked towards the door, which opened as soon as it came close. While the Roboid stepped through the door, Ember craned her neck to look back into the room to find that Caleb was doing his best to keep dodging the other Roboid, which was the last thing she saw before the door slammed shut again.

**So that's it for Chapter 14.  
Hope you enjoyed it!:D**

**The next one should be up by Monday.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Hiya!**

**I'm so sorry I didn't get this chapter up on Monday like I said! Real life decided that it was a good time to slap me in the face and dump a load of trouble over me.:( but all that's sorted out now so I should be able to keep my schedules when it comes to posting:)**

**Anyway, here's chapter 15:) hope you enjoy it:)**

Chapter 15: Scary stuff.

No matter how much Ember struggled, she couldn't break free of the Roboid's grip and it was scaring her. She didn't know where the Roboid was taking her, but she had a bad feeling about it. On the upside, it hadn't killed her yet, so it must've had something else planned for her. In the end, Ember gave up on struggling as it didn't do any good anyway and she would only end up hurting herself as she tried not to mention that it would tire her out.

She didn't recognize where she was in FutureGate, but the moment that the Roboid stepped into the Shade plant close to N-Lab, she started to panic.

"No!" Ember screamed, starting to struggle again. "No, let go of me!"

The Roboid didn't let go of her and simply stopped in the middle of the Shade plant. Ember kept struggling as hard as she could until the other black Roboid, she knew that it was the same one from the experiment labs as it had a scratch that she had caused by throwing the wrench, appeared into the room. However it didn't have Caleb with him and Ember felt her heart sinking, thinking that something must've happened to him.

The other Roboid walked over to one of the chambers of the machine in the room and pulled the door open. Ember's eyes widened when the Roboid had a hold of her walked over to the chamber as well.

"No!" Ember screamed again when the Roboid reached the chamber. "Let me go!"

The Roboid ignored Ember completely as it shoved her inside of the chamber and let go of her. Before she could escape out of it, the door slammed shut, trapping her inside.

"Let me out!" Ember screamed hitting her hands against the glass. "Please, let me out of here!"

Pleading didn't work with the Roboidz as they simply walked over to a control panel and clumsily started to tap the large coloured buttons that were on it. Ember started to really panic when she heard the machine being activated. The second that the machine was activated, she felt a rush of air inside of the chamber as if the air was being sucked out of it.

"Oh my god..." Ember whispered as she smelt something.

She didn't know what it was, but it smelt like how a Shade smelled, just a lot less worse. Although she was panicking, Ember tried to keep a clear head which wasn't really working as she started ramming her shoulder against the window in the door in the hopes it would shatter and give her a way to escape. The glass didn't break however and she only ended up hurting her shoulder as the smell in the chamber just got worse and worse by the second.

She looked over to the door that lead out of the Shade plant when it opened and the next thing she knew, Caleb stepped into the room, looking a little worse for wear, but he seemed to be okay. He was carrying one of the laser cannons and as soon as he laid eyes on the two Roboidz, he raised it and fired a blast. The laser blast caught one of the Roboidz in the head which exploded before it tilted over and crashing to the ground.

"Caleb!" Ember screamed, hitting against the glass of the chamber to get his attention. "Caleb! Help me!"

She watched as Caleb ran over to her and stopping right in front of the chamber.

"Hold on, I'm going to get you out of here." Caleb stated.

"Watch out!" Ember yelled.

She watched as Caleb turned to face the Roboid which had raised a barrel over its head. When the Roboid threw the barrel, Ember watched long enough to see Caleb rolling out of the way at the last minute before she ducked and covered her head as the barrel came right at the chamber. The barrel hit the door with a loud crash and Ember looked up to find that the door was still intact, but there were a few tiny cracks in the window. As she looked through the window, she started to feel the air getting thin and she started to cough for breath. Caleb had managed to get out of the way from the barrel's path safely and she watched as he fired the laser cannon again, hitting the second Roboid in the head as well. Even before it hit the ground, Caleb had dropped the laser cannon and ran over to the chamber that Ember was stuck in.

"Caleb, get me out of here." Ember pleaded. "Please!"

"It's alright, just keep calm!" Caleb replied as Ember started to cough again.

The thought of 'easy for you to say' did cross her mind for a few moments, but she didn't have the time to voice it as she started to cough for breath again while Caleb rushed over to the control panel. As the air got thinner and thinner, Ember started to feel her knees getting weaker and weaker until they finally gave out, which caused Ember to fall to the ground.

For a moment, Ember felt a lot of sympathy with the people who had actually been turned into Shades, the process was terrible. Then she felt disgusted, as Shades were basically reanimated corpses.

Breathing was getting harder and harder for Ember and she started coughing a lot more to get every single last bit of oxygen into her lungs. She slumped back against the wall of the chamber, starting to feel extremely lightheaded by the time that the machine shut down. When the door of the chamber opened, her eyes had closed as she felt like she was going to pass out at any moment. She didn't get the chance though as she heard the door being pulled open and the next thing she knew, she was being pulled out of the chamber.

"Ember?" Caleb's voice asked. "Ember! Ember, wake up!"

Ember opened her eyes to see that Caleb was kneeling in front of her, holding her up as she threatened to fall backwards onto the ground.

"Caleb?" Ember whispered weakly.

"Yeah, it's me." Caleb nodded. "You're safe now."

Ember opened her mouth to say something, but instead of talking, a coughing fit washed over her which made her lungs hurt.

"Come on, let's get you outside." Caleb said.

Ember just nodded tiredly as Caleb helped her to her feet. When Ember tried to stand by herself, her knees gave out again and Caleb had to stop her from falling.

"Come on, up you get." Caleb said before he effortlessly picked Ember up.

Ember wrapped her arms around Caleb's neck and rested her head against his chest as he carried her out of the Shade plant.

"It's okay." Caleb said soothingly as Ember closed her eyes. "You're safe now. I've got you."

A while later, Caleb stepped onto the deck and Ember opened her eyes when she felt the fresh air on her face. She looked around to find that the sun was just starting to set as Caleb put her on her feet.

"You okay?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Ember nodded after taking a few deep breaths. "Thank you."

"What are friends for, eh?" Caleb smirked.

"Seriously, thanks though." Ember said before hugging Caleb. "I thought I was going to die."

"Not on my watch." Caleb replied. "Got to protect my granny, don't I?"

"Stop calling me that!" Ember exclaimed, letting go of Caleb and hitting him on the chest.

Ember tried to look offended, but in the end that didn't work out as she couldn't keep a straight face, so she just gave up on it and started laughing herself.

After a few minutes of being outside, the two of them went back into FutureGate and started making their way back to the lair. When they arrived there, they silently agreed to get some sleep and somehow, the two of them ended up in Caleb's bed again, both of them needing the comfort of knowing they weren't alone.

When Ember opened her eyes, instead of being in the lair, she was back in the experiments lab. The room was filled with black Roboidz and when Ember tried to get to her feet to try and escape, she found that she couldn't. She glanced down at her bode only to see that she was strapped down to one of the experimenting tables she and Caleb had found during their exploration trip.

"No!" Ember screamed when she saw one of the Roboidz coming towards her with an instrument she'd never seen before. "Stay away from me!"

The black Roboid reached her and it held the device over her forehead with one hand while keeping her head still with the other. It kept the device there for a few moments before pulling it away. Ember turned her head away only to see that Caleb was in the room too. It didn't look like Caleb was moving though, he was looking deathly pale and she couldn't see any signs of breathing.

"Caleb?" Ember asked. "Wake up! Caleb!"

He didn't wake up though and Ember started to panic. She struggled against her bindings with all her strength, fighting to try and get free. Her struggles stopped for a moment when she saw one of the Roboidz pick up a Shade mask before starting to move towards Caleb. Seeing this happen, Ember doubled her effort with renewed determination to get free.

"No!" she screamed when the Roboid reached Caleb. "You stay the bloody hell away from him! I'll destroy you all if you touch him! D'you hear me? I'll destroy you all!"

Ember didn't know whether the Roboidz heard her or whether they just ignored her, but the Roboid that was holding the mask just kept moving towards Caleb. Ember was completely helpless as the Roboid fitted the mask to Caleb's face, no matter how much she struggled.

"Caleb!" Ember screamed again as tears started to stream down her face. "Wake up! Please! Wake up!"

"Ember." A strong voice said. "Ember Tennant."

Ember forgot about her panic for a few moments when she heard the voice. It was strong, powerful even and it was distinctly female.

"Ember Tennant." The voice repeated. "It's time for you to wake up."

As the voice said this, Ember recognized it as being Cybele's. As Cybele spoke, the nightmare started to fade away and Ember felt herself starting to wake up.

"Ember?" Cybele's voice asked as she was waking up. "Are you awake?"

Ember slowly opened her eyes and saw that she was in Cybele's hide out. She was lying against someone and when she looked up, she found that person was Caleb. She also realized that Caleb had a tight but gentle grip on her, particular on her wrists, as if he was afraid that she was going to lash out at him. The second thing she realized was that Caleb was looking terrified for some reason. She glanced down at herself for a moment and saw that she was drenched in sweat. She could feel droplets of it sliding into her eyes and as she reached up to brush the droplets from her eyes, she found that she'd been crying in her sleep.

"Ember?" Caleb asked, his voice sounding a little fearful. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah..." Ember said slowly. "Yeah, I am..."

She glanced around in confusion, wondering how she'd gotten to Cybele's hideout. Before she was able to ask the question, Cybele started to speak.

"Caleb brought you here." She said. "He couldn't wake you from your nightmare."

Ember stared at Cybele for a few moments before the sentence registered. The nightmare... seeing a Shade's mask being fitted to Caleb's face... she felt herself flushing with heat again and she knew that she was about to start hyperventilating again.

"No, no, no, no..." Caleb said, starting to panic himself. "Ember, it's okay, you're safe. Cybele, do something, please."

"Ember, you are letting your fear control you." Cybele said calmly. "Your nightmare wasn't real, it doesn't control you. You control it."

Ember closed her eyes and focussed on Cybele's words, as well as trying to keep her breathing as level as she could. After a while, Ember managed to stop the hyperventilation from happening and she opened her eyes again, only to find that Caleb was looking even more worried than before.

"I'm okay." She reassured him before turning to Cybele. "Thank you, Cybele."

"You're welcome." Cybele replied. "Now, Caleb, I need to have a word with Ember alone."

"But..." Caleb started to argue.

"It won't take more than a few minutes, Caleb." Cybele interrupted firmly but kindly.

Caleb hesitated for a few moments, glancing at Ember then at Cybele and back again.

"I'll be okay." Ember said reassuringly. "Go on, I'll catch up."

"Alright." Caleb said hesitantly. "Goodnight, Cybele."

"Goodnight Caleb." Cybele replied.

Ember watched as he climbed to his feet before climbing up the steps and disappearing from sight. Both women, well, female AI and girl, stayed silent as they listened to Caleb's footsteps dying away and once they were gone, Ember climbed to her feet, leaning back against the railing.

"What is it, Cybele?" Ember asked.

"Caleb told me about finding out who his parents are." Cybele replied. "Do you have something to do with that?"

Ember bit her lip. She felt like she was being accused of helping Caleb find out who his parents were. It was only natural that she had right? She knew who his parents had been, who was she to keep that information from him?

"I didn't tell him on purpose." Ember replied. "It wasn't even in the Archive when I was unlocking it; I dug too deep into it when I tried to satisfy my curiosity. Caleb wanted to go look at the Archive the day after we'd beaten Neuros and Arkon, he'd been so hopeful there was something about his parents in it... I couldn't just sit there and do nothing about it."

"So you showed him Laura Gant's message to her son?" Cybele asked.

Ember cringed a little at the tone of voice that Cybele was using, she felt like she was being told of by one of her teachers.

"I couldn't just stand by and do nothing..." Ember said quietly, looking down at the ground.

"It wasn't up to you to show Caleb that message, Ember." Cybele said firmly.

"Wasn't it?" Ember asked, getting a little angry. "I don't know how much you know about me, Cybele, but you've got no business in telling me what I can and can't do. I just found out today that I'm Caleb's grandmother, if anything I think it gives me the right to show stuff like that to him."

"You are still a mere child." Cybele said sharply. "You don't have any idea when you have the right to do something or not."

"A mere child?" Ember repeated. "You know, you're sounding a lot like Neuros right now. I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but Caleb had a right to know about his parents, but you know what I find the hardest thing to believe? After 5 years of taking care of him, being his mentor, and more importantly after 5 years of being the closest thing to a mother Caleb has, you didn't tell him one single thing about his parents. And don't try to tell me that you didn't know anything about them, you're a computer with what I imagine a massive storage capacity, you must've known something."

"I do know about his parents." Cybele replied. "I was going to tell him when the time was right."

"No offence, but somehow, I doubt that statement." Ember remarked. "Like I said, I'm not trying to pick a fight here, so I think I'd better get out of here before we do get into one."

With that Ember moved to the steps and walked up them before stopping at the top step and turning back to ace Cybele again.

"I'm sorry you don't agree with my choices." Ember stated. "I was just trying to do what I felt was the right thing to do."

Before Cybele had the chance to answer, Ember walked out of her hideout. It didn't take that long for her to find Caleb; he was standing near something that looked like a massive boiler, juggling a few metal balls. What was it with Caleb and juggling? She thought to herself as she walked over to him. There were more than enough other things he could be doing other than juggling. Ember couldn't help but smile however when she saw the look of utter concentration on his face before she stepped forward and grabbed one of the balls out of the air before it could land in Caleb's hand.

"Oi!" Caleb complained.

"What?" Ember smiled as Caleb caught the remaining balls. "Had to find some way of getting your attention."

"Did you have to ruin my practising?" Caleb complained as Ember threw him the remaining ball.

"Suppose I did." she replied, grinning a little.

"What did you and Cybele talk about?" Caleb asked as the two of them started walking back towards the lair.

"This and that." Ember shrugged. "Girl stuff mostly."

"Girl stuff?" Caleb repeated, clearly buying the small white lie.

The last thing that Ember wanted to do was cause a rift between Cybele and Caleb over her, so she decided that the best thing to do was to tell a white lie.

"Yeah, girl stuff." Ember repeated, nodding. "You wouldn't understand, you being a guy and all."

"Probably not." Caleb nodded thoughtfully.

Ember laughed at how thoughtful Caleb was looking and she secretly hoped that he would never find out the true nature of her conversation with Cybele.

Caleb and Ember walked back to the lair in silence and once there, Ember walked into the store room to freshen up a little. Once she was done doing that, she walked into the sleeping quarters to find that Caleb was already lying in his bed space staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Ember asked as she lay down beside him.

"A what?" Caleb asked, frowning at her.

"A penny." Ember repeated. "It's a coin you use to pay with... yeah, suppose that's not really all that important here on FutureGate. Anyway, 'a penny for your thoughts' is basically another way of asking 'what's on your mind'."

"Oh right." Caleb remarked. "Well, I was just thinking about you having a nightmare."

"Oh..." Ember said quietly. "I suppose you'll want to know what it's about..."

Caleb didn't reply and she took that as a yes. Ember took a deep breath as she felt herself starting to shiver a little.

"We were back in that experiment lab... we were both strapped to one of those tables and they were turning us into shades." Ember explained. "Not going to tell you all the details, but it was horrible."

"Yeah, that is horrible." Caleb agreed.

Ember nodded silently as tears started to form in her eyes.

"It's alright." Caleb said as he reached out and pulled Ember into a tight hug. "I've got you."

Ember hugged him back and tried to bury the image of a Roboid fitting a mask over Caleb's face as she buried her face against his shoulder.

**So that's it for chapter 15.**

**Hope you liked it!:D**

**The next chapter should be up on Sunday evening.**

**~ Abby**


	16. Chapter 16

**Hiya!  
Sorry this chapter's late! It's been a mad weekend. Anyway, thanks to everyone whose reviewed! It's really appreciated!**

Chapter 16: The Last Day On FutureGate.

Over the next few days, Caleb and Ember spend time retrieving Bio-Rods from the Roboidz' backs. It was a boring job, seeing that every few minutes, they had to go back to the lair to empty their packs, but it had to be done. It had been a week since Ember had arrived on FutureGate and she was starting to feel home sick, not that she was going to admit this to Caleb as he'd just end up being worried about her, but of course the feeling was there. She also knew that it was going to be time to go home soon; otherwise the future wouldn't get a chance to play out like it was supposed to.

She couldn't help but worry a little about the future, knowing what was going to happen, but she knew that she didn't have a choice in the matter. So during the nights after Caleb had fallen asleep, Ember would get out of bed and start preparing for her departure.

This basically meant repairing the computer that Caleb had smashed so he wouldn't have to go back to the medical bay every time he wanted access to the FutureGate mainframe, writing out the most important tricks she knew when it came to hacking and generally making sure that the lair didn't lack anything that Caleb might need in the future.

At the end of each night, Ember would make sure that she'd be back in bed to catch at least an hour or two of sleep so Caleb wouldn't start thinking that she didn't get any sleep at all during the night. The two of them had both started to heal up pretty well, the bruises were still there, but they were starting to fade. As for Ember's burns from the Neuros web, they were far from healing completely and Ember didn't know how she was going to explain them to her family, but she felt that she'd worry about that if they found out. Even Ember's fight with Cybele had turned out pretty well in the end. Cybele was still angry with Ember for revealing Caleb's heritage to him, but she made an effort in trying not to pick a fight, a favour that Ember returned.

Ember woke up on what she and Caleb had agreed was going to be her last day on FutureGate and Ember felt terrible about it, but she also felt a little relieved. She felt terrible due to the fact she was going to leave Caleb behind on his own with still a million of Bio-Rods to collect and a world to rebuild, but she felt a little relieved because of the fact that she was going home, back to her own time.

Ember looked around for a moment to find that Caleb was already out of bed, she climbed to her feet after putting on her boots. When she walked out into the main room of the lair, she found that Caleb was sitting in his chair at his desk, staring out of the window. She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him from behind in a hug.

"You okay?" Ember asked leaning her chin on his shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm okay." Caleb nodded although he sounded sombre.

"Doesn't sound like it." Ember remarked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Caleb shrugged. "Just wish you didn't have to go home."

Ember suppressed a sigh at how vulnerable Caleb sounded when he said this. The two of them have had this discussion more often than not over the past few days and each time it didn't get any easier. It didn't really help matters that day that it was actually going to be Ember's last day on FutureGate.

"I know." Ember replied. "I wish I didn't have to go either, but we both know I have too."

"I know." Caleb shrugged. "Just wish you didn't though."

"You and me both." Ember smiled. "Now come on, if this is going to be my last day here, I don't want to spend it with you sitting around moping about why I have to go home."

"I don't really feel like doing anything, Ember." Caleb stated.

"Well, tough luck." Ember remarked, grabbing hold of Caleb's arm and pulling him out of his chair. "We're going to do something fun even if I have to force you in going along with it. So come on, let's go."

Ember pulled Caleb along with her, leaving no room for arguing. To be honest, Ember didn't have a clue what they could do for fun at the moment, but she did know that she didn't want to see Caleb moping about the fact that she would leave by that evening. Her eyes fell on the guitar standing against the wall and she grinned as she got an idea before snatching it up of the ground.

"What are you going to do with that?" Caleb asked. "It doesn't work."

"It does work; it's just out of tune." Ember grinned before grabbing his hand again. "Come on."

She pulled Caleb along until they got outside on the upper decks. Ember let go of Caleb's hand and stepped out into the rain. It was almost like the weather knew how Caleb and Ember were feeling.

"What are you doing?" Caleb asked as Ember walked over a low box that was standing close to the edge of the deck.

"Come on already." Ember replied as she pushed herself up on it.

Ember didn't care it was raining; it wasn't even raining that hard so they wouldn't get soaked through completely. Even if that did happen, Ember didn't care. She had decided that nothing was going to get her down that day. She was going to make the most of her last day on FutureGate even if that meant getting soaked through. She put the guitar down in her lap and started to tune it while Caleb was still standing at the door.

"Are you coming or what?" Ember called over to Caleb who was still standing just inside the door, out of the rain.

"It's raining!" Caleb called back.

"So?" Ember asked. "Come out here already!"

She grinned as Caleb pulled the hood from his hoodie up over his head to protect his cybernetics against the rain before he stepped out onto the deck, pulling a face that clearly meant that he would rather be sitting the lair sulking. While Caleb sat down beside Ember, she kept going in tuning the guitar and when she was done five minutes later, the rain had stopped falling.

"Is there a point in this?" Caleb asked.

"Maybe, maybe not." Ember grinned, knowing exactly what song she was going to play. "You be the judge of that, got to warn you though, I'm not all that great at singing so feel free to cover your ears if it gets unbearable."

Ember grinned as Caleb gave her a confused look while she started to play the first notes of the song. She glanced up from the guitar to Caleb to find that he was looking a little creeped out by the sound of the guitar. Ember thought that was probably because he had only heard the guitar playing when it was out of tune. As the intro of the song drew to a close, Ember took a deep breath before starting to sing.

"When you're down and troubled

And you need a helping hand

And nothing, nothing is going right

Close your eyes and think of me

And soon I'll be there

To brighten up even your darkest night

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I'll come running to see you again

Winter, spring, summer or fall

All you have to do is call

And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah

You've got a friend."

When Ember glanced over to Caleb, she saw that he was now looking fascinated which made her smile when she saw the look of childlike wonder.

"If the sky above you

Should turn dark and full of clouds

And that north wind should begin to blow

Keep your head together

And call my name out loud, yeah

Soon I'll be knocking upon your door.

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I'll come running to see you again

Winter, spring, summer or fall

All you have to do is call

And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah

You've got a friend.

Ain't it good to know that you've got a friend?

When people can be so cold

They'll hurt you and desert you

And take your soul if you let them

Oh yeah, but don't you let them.

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I'll come running to see you again

Winter, spring, summer or fall

All you have to do is call

And I'll be there, yes I will

You've got a friend.

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I'll come running to see you again

Winter, spring, summer or fall

All you have to do is call

Lord, I'll be there yes I will

You've got a friend."

Ember finished playing the last notes of the song before putting the guitar away and turning to look at Caleb, who had been stunned into silence.

"That was..." Caleb started to say before stopping.

"Yeah?" Ember asked.

"Terrible." Caleb finished. "You can't sing at all."

"Here I was thinking I'd get a compliment about my song of choice." Ember sighed dramatically before laughing. "It's okay; I know I was pretty much off key the whole time. The point of the song was actually to tell you that even though we won't be able to stand in the same room, it won't stop us from being able to talk to each other, I mean, you've got that link right? That allows you to send messages to 2010?"

"Yeah." Caleb nodded.

"Well, when I get home, I'll just have to figure out a way to send messages back through that link." Ember replied.

"Really?" Caleb asked.

"Make that a hell yeah." Ember smiled. "Of course I want to stay in touch with you. It's not like I'm going to be able to forget about all of the stuff that's happened here in the past week when I get home. It'll stay with me for the rest of my life. Everything that's happened changed me, but in a good way and I've got you to thank for all of that."

Ember smiled as Caleb grabbed her into a hug and she hugged him back as tightly as she could.

"Can you teach me how to play that song?" Caleb asked.

"Sure." Ember smiled.

For the remainder of the day, the two of them sat out on the deck where Ember taught Caleb how to play the guitar. By the time that the afternoon was coming to an end, Caleb was able to play the full song.

They both looked out over the water as the sun was starting to set and seeing that, Ember knew that her time on FutureGate had come to an end. She glanced over to Caleb when she heard him sighing deeply and she knew that he was thinking the same thing she was.

"It's time." Ember said quietly.

"I know..." Caleb replied, his voice just as quiet.

They got to their feet and walked hand in hand to the door. To Ember it felt like that they were on their way to witness an execution. The tension was so thick that it could be cut with a knife. It was at its worst when they reached the command deck where the time portal was. Ember put the guitar down on one of the consoles and sighed as she turned to look at the time portal. She bit her lip a little when she felt the tears burning at the back of her eyes, she told herself that day that she wasn't going to cry when the time came that she had to go home, but that was easier said than done.

Ember turned to look at Caleb and found that he was staring at the ground, still having the hood of his hoodie over his head which hid his face from view. Ember walked up to him and gently tilted his face up and she found that there were tears already sliding down his face.

"Oh Caleb." Ember sighed before hugging him.

"I don't want you to go." Caleb whispered as he hugged Ember back.

"I know." Ember nodded, rubbing his back. "I don't want to go either, but I can't stay... you know that..."

"It's not fair." Caleb stated.

"No, it's not." Ember agreed as she let go of Caleb. "But sometimes we've got to do things whether we like it or not. It's the way life works; it's not all just fun and games."

"It still isn't fair." Caleb stated.

Ember smiled sadly as she hugged Caleb again. She wanted nothing more than to stay on FutureGate to keep him company, but if she didn't go home, it would end up erasing Caleb's existence from the timeline and that was something she wanted to avoid at all costs.

"Bloody time travel..." Ember whispered to herself before sighing. "Thanks for everything Caleb."

"I should thank you." Caleb replied, pulling away to look at Ember.

"No you don't." Ember smiled. "It's what friends are for."

"Yeah, you're right." Caleb smirked.

"Here, I want you to have this." Ember said.

She reached up and pulled of her favourite necklace. The pendant was on a black leather string and the pendant itself looked like it was a wolf that was howling at the moon.

"It brought me luck on more than one occasion." Ember explained as she pressed the necklace into Caleb's hand. "I hope it'll do the same for you."

"Thanks..." Caleb said slowly, looking down at the pendant. "I don't have anything to give you..."

"That's okay." Ember smiled. "You've given me more than you think."

"What's that?" Caleb asked.

"A new friend for life." Ember replied, still smiling.

Ember took the pendant from Caleb's hand and looped the cord around his head so the necklace was hanging of his neck.

"Looks better on you than it does on me." Ember smiled as Caleb looked down at it.

Ember sighed as she knew that both of them were buying time to delay the inevitable. She glanced back at the time portal and bit her lip to stop the flow of tears that were trying to fall from her eyes. When she looked back at Caleb, she found that a fresh wave of tears was making its way down his face.

"It's okay." Ember smiled slightly as she felt her own tears falling. "You know I'm so proud of you, having gone through everything you've been through and still coming out on top."

"Can't you stay for just one more day?" Caleb asked sadly.

"It would just be delaying the inevitable." Ember shook her head sadly. "And it would only get harder to say goodbye."

"It's not fair." Caleb whispered again.

"No, it's not." Ember agreed as she hugged Caleb again.

When Ember pulled away, she pressed a kiss to Caleb's cheek, not knowing what else to do.

"Come on." Ember said softly. "It's time."

She took hold of his hand and led him over to the switch that controlled the time portal before going to stand on the pad of it.

"Caleb?" Ember asked as Caleb simply stared at the switch.

"Yeah?" Caleb asked looking up at her.

"Smile." Ember said, smiling slightly herself. "Remember the good times we've had."

She watched as a small smile spread out over his face before Caleb wiped the tears from his face.

"I'll see you again soon." Ember smiled.

"Yeah, you will." Caleb smiled back.

Ember watched as Caleb pulled the switch towards him and after they exchanged one last smile, he pushed the switch forward and the time portal activated.

**Well, this is it for chapter 16. Hope you guys liked it! **

**The song is McFly's version of 'you've got a friend'.**

**Anyway there's just one more chapter to go before this story is finished. I can't make a promise of when it's going to be up exactly, but chapter 17 is going to be up sometime this week.:)**

**~ Abby**


	17. Chapter 17

**Hello! So this is it, the final chapter. **

**Hope you enjoy it and thanks to everyone whose reviewed:)**

Chapter 1 7: Aftermath

Ember hit the ground and she opened her eyes to find that she was back on familiar ground. She was lying in the middle of the playfield close to her home as she climbed to her feet, Ember realized that it was night time and the sun had almost completely set. She didn't know what time it was, but she thought it must've been around dinner time; at least that's what it felt like to her stomach. As she started to walk in the direction of home, she felt hunger make place for dread in the pit of her stomach, she knew that she hadn't come back the day she left seeing as she passed lampposts, she could see a flyer attached to it that showed a picture of herself and saying to contact her mum or brother if they'd seen her. That meant that she must've been missing for over a week and that would mean she'd have a frantic mum and brother to deal with and she didn't even want to think about the fact that the authorities had been informed of her disappearance. Hell, she didn't even know what she was going to tell everyone about what had happened to her, or how to explain her resistance outfit.

"Great…" Ember muttered to herself. "Just bloody brilliant…"

Even though she didn't know what she was going to tell everyone, she did know that she wasn't going to mention anything about FutureGate or Caleb, at least not to the police and her family. However, she was planning to find all recruits that had been on FutureGate and unite them in one community. In the end, Ember decided that the best thing to do was to make up a lie that she didn't remember anything, thinking that it was going to be the easiest lie to maintain.

As Ember walked up to the front door of the house she lived in with her family, the dread in her stomach had doubled in size. If she was being completely honest with herself, she'd rather take on a battalion of Roboidz on her own. After taking a deep breath to gather what little courage she could, Ember reached out and rang the door bell. The door was opened in a matter of seconds and Ember watched as the door was opened and only caught a glimpse of Bryce before she was grabbed into a tight hug by him.

"Emmy." Bryce breathed. "Oh my god, Emmy…"

"I'm fine, Bryce." Ember replied, hugging Bryce back. "I'm perfectly fine."

"Where have you been?" Bryce asked, letting go of Ember and grabbing hold of her shoulders instead. "Do you have any idea what state mum is in right now? Do you know what we've been through! Where have you been?"

"I... I don't remember." Ember shook her head.

Ember felt horrible for having to lie to her brother, but she couldn't tell him the truth no matter what.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bryce asked. "You don't remember? You've been gone for a bloody week."

"I don't remember okay." Ember replied, trying to act upset. "I don't remember what happened to me."

"Come here." Bryce sighed, pulling Ember into a hug again. "I'm sorry; I was just so worried about you. I'm glad you're okay, Emmy."

"Okay." Ember nodded, trying to keep the act up.

"Come on." Bryce said. "Get upstairs and get cleaned up. I'll call mum. Oh and get rid of that ridiculous outfit."

Ember had to fight to keep her expression normal at that statement about her outfit. She was pretty proud of her resistance 'uniform', it wasn't just practical, it was extremely comfy too.

She stepped into the house past Bryce and ran up to her bedroom to grab some clean clothes before disappearing into the bathroom. As she was showering, she couldn't describe how good it felt to be able to take a proper shower after a week of only being able to freshen up using a bowl of water.

After her shower, Ember changed into a pair of jeans and a long sleeved shirt that had holes in the sleeves for her thumbs so she could not only hide the burn on her arm, but also the bandage around her hand from when she'd tried to grab Arkon's Bio-Rod. Ember glanced down at her hand and thought back to that fight and she couldn't help but smile a little when she remembered Caleb taking out Arkon on his own in the end. For a moment she was filled with a sense of pride before realizing that she was back in her own bedroom. After brushing her hair, Ember hid her resistance outfit; the last thing she wanted was for the outfit to be confiscated. Ember lay down on her stomach and pulled up the loose floorboard underneath her bed before shoving her outfit and the boots into the gap. After making sure that the floorboard was covering the gap again, Ember got to her feet and pulled out an old set of army boots and an old jumpsuit that she'd once used for a fancy dress party which she dumped at the door of her room. The whole point of this was that the police was probably going to take her fake 'resistance outfit' with them and analyse it, as they thought that the disappearances of the recruits were kidnappings.

Ember ran her hands through her still damp hair before looking around back at the fake resistance outfit, she was really dreading having to face her mother and everyone else, not to mention she was dreading the lie she was going to have to maintain.

After taking a few calming breaths, Ember walked downstairs to find that Bryce was talking to their mother, who was already crying. Ember felt like crying herself when she saw her mother. If there was one thing that Ember couldn't stand than it was seeing her mother cry. She stepped off the bottom step and slowly walked over to Bryce and Melissa.

"Hey mum..."Ember said quietly.

Melissa turned around and the moment that she saw Ember, a new wave of tears started to fall. Ember rushed over to Melissa and hugged her tightly. After a few moments, she felt Bryce's arm wrapping around her and she knew that he was hugging both Ember and Melissa at the same time. It was then that she realized how much she'd missed her mum and brother.

The following days were unpleasant for Ember, which was putting it mildly and she had no other choice but to go through with it. As Ember had suspected, Melissa had called the police when she'd disappeared. Because of the fact that Ember claimed that she didn't remember anything, the police had her visit a hypnotist to try and recall her memory.

As soon as Ember had heard this, she'd gone looking online for tips and tricks to avoid actually being hypnotised and she was able to fake the results that put the police on the wrong track about what had happened to her and all the other recruits that Caleb had enlisted.

Ember was well of the fact that lying to the police was highly illegal, but she couldn't be really bothered to care about that, to her the most important thing was making sure that the police wouldn't find out what had really happened.

All in all, it took a few days before Ember was allowed to go back to school and during that time, Ember had managed to set up a website so that any recruits that happened stumble across it could contact her. She'd also been in contact with Tommy, who'd been trying his best to get information out of Ember about what had happened to her, as he was convinced that she wasn't telling the truth at all.

On the fifth day after coming home from FutureGate, Ember walked into the school grounds and she was immediately cornered by a group of students from her year who all wanted to know what had happened to her.

"Alright you lot, clear off!" a voice yelled. "Give her some breathing room."

Ember grinned when she realized who the voice belonged to. The group of students let the owner of the voice pass and Ember grinned when she saw that it was indeed Hannah who had been yelling.

"Go on!" Hannah yelled. "Clear off!"

Because of the confusion that Hannah had caused in the older students, Hannah quickly grabbed Ember's hand and pulled her along away from the crowd that had gathered. Ember let Hannah led her over to a classroom where they could talk privately.

"Thanks." Ember laughed once she'd closed the door behind her.

"You're welcome." Hannah grinned before turning serious. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you for a week now!"

"FutureGate." Ember grinned to which Hannah's eyes got wide.

"Seriously?" Hannah asked. "You went to FutureGate?"

"Yeah, I did." Ember smiled.

"Really?" Hannah asked. "You met Caleb?"

"Yeah, I met Caleb." Ember replied, grinning widely. "And we beat Neuros."

"Awesome!" Hannah exclaimed punching the air.

"Alright, calm down." Ember laughed. "You're attracting stares. I'll tell you everything, alright? Just calm down."

Just when Ember wanted to tell Hannah what had happened, of course planning to leave some of the more gruesome details out, the first bell rang that signalled that it was time for class. So Ember and Hannah agreed to meet during the first break to talk about what had happened while Ember had been on FutureGate.

Ember walked into her classroom for the first period and dropped down in the seat at her desk. She leaned her arms on the table and dropped her head on top of them as she was already starting to get a headache and the day had only just started.

"Ember, good to have you back with us." Miss Jaspers said as she came back into the classroom.

Ember just gave her the thumbs up without looking up at her before dropping her hand back to the table again as she thought about how she could possibly get through the day without longing to be back on FutureGate again.

"Alright, we've got a new student joining us today." Miss Jaspers said.

The entire class fell silent at this and Ember raised her head to look at the door just in time to see a young man stepping into the room. Ember felt her breath catching in her throat a little as the young man stepped into the classroom. She knew that this guy was Rutger Lansing, her future husband, purely on instinct. His face had so many features that were similar to Caleb's features, the main one being the pointy face.

"This is Rutger Lansing." Miss Jaspers continued. "He's new to England and doesn't speak the language very well yet, so please be patient with him. Rutger, you can sit next to Ember, over there."

Rutger nodded silently and Ember watched as he walked over to her desk and sat down beside her.

"Hi." Rutger said.

"Hey." Ember replied. "I'm Ember."

"I am the man you will marry." Rutger replied, smirking a little.

Ember stared at Rutger for a few moments and silently started to freak out about how he could possibly know that before she realized that he was just throwing a cheesy pick up line at her. Ember forced herself to calm down and she forced herself to smile back at Rutger.

"Why don't you buy me a drink first?" Ember suggested.

"Alright." Rutger smirked.

Ember smiled back before turning to look at the blackboard again. She had to admit that even though she'd only met Rutger a minute ago, he was pretty likable and charming. Ember couldn't really see herself falling in love with this guy though, let alone getting pregnant. But as she had seen a hint of her future, she knew that it was going to happen over time anyway.

Ember leaned back in her seat and tried her best to concentrate on the lesson, but she could. Her mind kept going back to the memories that she had of Caleb and FutureGate. She bit her lip to hide her smile as she thought about the good times she'd had. But as she thought about FutureGate, she couldn't help but wonder if she would ever be able to go back to the year 2110.

**So, this is the end of 'A New Recruit'. I hope you all liked it as much as I enjoyed writing it! thanks so much to all of you for leaving me the kind reviews and sticking with the story, love you guys! *hugs you all***

**and again I want to say a massive thank you to Oddments and Tweaks for all the help she's given me with this story. *glomps***

**now, I can reveal that there is going to be a part two to this story. I plan to have it up within the next two weeks.:) as always let me know what you think/thought about the chapter and I'd really appreciate it fi you could tell me what you think of the story as a whole:).**

**~ Abby.**


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